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WOMEN OF COLONIAL AND 
RE VOL UTIONA R V TIMES ::i^ 



DOLLY MADISON 

BY MAUD IVILDER GOODWIN 



WITH PORTRAIT 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

NEW YORK MCMXI 






Copyright^ iSgb, by 
Charles Scribner's Sons 







TO 
HILDA HAWTHORNE GOODWIN, 



IVOMEN OF COLONIAL AND 
REyOLUTIONARY TIMES ^^ 



PREFACE 

Thackeray^ in the beginning of his lectures on 
the Four Georges, makes loving mention of a 
charming lady of the old school^ whose life ex- 
tended far hack into the last century. " / often 
thought,'' he says, ''as I took my kind old 
friend's hand, how with it I held on to the old 
society of wits and men of the world." 

Even such a link with the past, to those of us 
at least who have reached middle age, is Mrs. 
Madison. This life of hers which almost or quite 
touched ours, touched also the lives of Alexander 
Hamilton and Aaron Burr, of Decatur and 
Somers and Paul Jones, of Talleyrand and 
Lafayette and Jefferson, while she was " dear 
Dolly,^^ to the spouse of Washington himself. 
Her life was so deeply influenced hy its envi- 
ronment, and its significance depended so largely 
upon the people and events with which it was 
connected, that I feel that no apology is necessary 
for the effort I have made to present in this 
volume less a formal biography than a sketch of 
the social and domestic life of the epoch as it 
affected Dolly Madison, 



PREFACE 

The authorities (outside of unpublished letters 
and contemporary newspapers^ upon which 1 
have relied are as follows : For the general his- 
tory of the United States, the volumes of Winsor, 
Adams and McMaster. For local history and 
tradition^ the standard histories of Virginia, 
Meade'' s Old Churches and Families of Vir- 
ginia, the biographies of Virginia Statesmen 
and the Journal of a Young Lady of Vir- 
ginia. For the picture of Philadelphia life, The 
Friends^ Monthly Meeting Records, Watson*s 
Annals of Philadelphia, Qraydons Memoirs, 
Quakers in Pennsylvania (one of the Johns 
Hopkins studies), the privately printed Journal 
of Elizabeth Drinker, the sketches of travel left 
hy Robin, Chastellux, de Liancourt, Timothy 
Twining and Wansey, and the letters of Fisher 
Ames and Jeremiah Smith ; for personal details 
in the life of Mr. and Mrs. Madison, the Madi- 
son Papers^ both published and unpublished, in 
the State Department at Washington, A Colored 
Man's Reminiscences of James Madison, the 
Life and Times of Madison (Rives^, The Life of 
James Madison (Gay), Letters and other Writ- 
ings of James Madison, and Selected Extracts 
from his Correspondence^ edited by Mciruire ; 
The Letters of Mrs. Madison published with a 
Memoir by her grand-niece ; the letters of Joel 
Barlow, Thomas Jefferson., John and Abigail 



PREFACE 

Adams, John Randolph, James Monroe, W. W. 
Sullivan, the Seatons, and Aaron Burr; the 
Retrospect of Western Travel, hy Harriet Marti- 
neau, and the Folk Diary {unpublished) which 
hy the courtesy of the Lenox Library, I have 
been enabled to see. Brief sketches of Mrs. 
Madison, yielding much entertaining gossip, I 
have found in the papers of the National Por- 
trait Gallery ; The Court Circles of the Repub- 
lic, Queens of American Society ; Our Early 
Presidents, their Wives and Families ; Worthy 
Women of the Last Century ; Ladies of the 
White House, and Homes of American States- 
men. 

My thanks for assistance are particularly 
due to Mr. Ainsworth R. Spofford, Mr. Fred- 
erick D. Stone, Mr. Adrian H. Joline, Mr, 
James L. Penny packer, Mr. Paul L. Ford, 
Mr. Charles Collins, Miss Emily V. Mason, 
Mrs. Adele Cutis Williams, Mr. Henry D. 
Biddlcy and Mr. Detrick of Montpellier, 



CONTENTS 



/-CHILDHOOD 

Dolly Payne the little Hanover County Maid— Birth- 
Ancestry— Life on a Virginia Plantation— Education 
of Women in the Eighteenth Century— Children's 
Patriotism * 

//_-^ QUAKER GIRLHOOD 

Removal of John Payne's Family to Philadelphia— The 
Quaker City and its old Landmarks— The Belles and 
Beaux— Their Dress— Philadelphia Society— Haddon- 
field and its Frolics— The Quaker Memorial against 
Slavery—" Crucifying Expenses " of Philadelphia Life 
—Failure of John Payne— Marriage of Dolly Payne to 
John Todd— A Quaker Wedding 14 

III— FRIEND JOHN TODD 

Miniature of Dolly Todd— Death of John Payne— The 
Master of Scholars — Birth of John Payne Todd and 
William Temple Todd— Yellow Fever— Gray's Ferry- 
Death of John Todd— Illness of Dolly Todd and Death 
of her Infant Son— John Todd's Will 34 

iy—"THE GREAT LITTLE MADISON'' 

Madison introduced by Aaron Burr— Sketch of Madi- 
son's Life — Previous Love-affair— Marriage of Mr. 
Madison and Mrs. Todd at " Harewood " — Wedding 
Outfit of an Eighteenth Century Bridegroom — Wedding 
Journey — Montpellier — Philadelphia Gayeties — Inaugu- 
ration of John Adams— Close of Dolly Madison's Life 

in Philadelphia 47 

xi 



CONTENTS 

PACK 

F—THE NEW CAPITAL 

Washington in 1801 — Abigail Adams' Impressions of 
the White House — JefEerson elected President — Madi- 
son Secretary of State — English and French Fashions 
— An International Episode— State Dinner-Parties — 
Wigs 79 

y I— WIFE OF THE SECRETARY OF 
STATE 

Gilbert Stuart's Portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Madison— 
Marriae:e of Anna Payne to Richard Cutts— News of 
the Duel between Burr and Hamilton— Illness of Mrs. 
Madison -Visits to Monticello— Jefferson re-elected— 
Mrs. Madison's Knee troublesome — Visit to Philadel- 
phia— Dr. Physick — Social Life at the Capital —Madi- 
son a Candidate for the Presidency — Death of Mrs. 
Payne g8 

ni—IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

Inauguration of Madison — Inaugural Ball at Long's 
Hotel — Mrs. Madison as Mistress of the White House 
— Her Drawing-room — Washington Irving's Visit to the 
Capital — Anecdotes illustrating Dolly Madison's Tact 
and Kindness — Letters to and from Joel Barlow and 
his Family 124 

VIII— WAR CLOUDS 

Announcement in the "National Intelligencer" — 
Changes wrought by twenty nine Years of Peace — 
Causes of the War — Attitude of the Newspapers — In- 
cident of the presentation of the Macedonian flag — 
Madison's Mob — Mrs. Madison's Influence in assisting 
the Administration — Mrs. Seaton's Account of a Dinner 
at the White House— New Year's Calls— Mrs. Madison 
as she looked in 1813 iS' 

IX— THE BURNING OF WASHINGTON 

Defenceless State of Washington in 1814— Weakness of 
the Government — News of the British Fleet in Chesa- 
peake Bay— Tlie British marching on Washington — 
Consternation in the City— Scenes at Bladensburg— 
xii 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Mrs. Madison's Letter describing her Personal Experi- 
ences—Paul Jennings' Account— The British in Posses- 
sion-Burning of public Buildings— Flight of Mr. and 
Mrs. Madison— Return to the Capital— The White 
House in Ruins i68 

X— PEACE 

Arrival of the Peace-messenger— Rejoicings throughout 
the Country— News received at the Octagon— Festivi- 
ties— Mrs. Madison the most popular Person in the 
United States— Social Events of the Peace Winter- 
Receptions in honor of General Jackson — Close of 
Madison's Administration — Eulogies upon Mrs. 
Madison 184 

XI—LIFE AT MONTPELLIER 

Route from Washington to M on tpellier— Description 
of the Madison Homestead— An old-fashioned Garden- 
Madison's Mother— Dolly Madison's Devotion to her — 
Letter from Madison to his Nephew— Sketch of Payne 
Todd's Career— The Madison Correspondence— Gifts 
to Mr. and Mrs. Madison 201 

XII-^yiRGINIA HOSPITALITY 

The always Open Doors of Montpellier— Distinguished 
Guests— Hospitalities of Monticello— Protest of Jeffer- 
son and his Daughter against the excessive Demands — 
Visit of Harriet Martineau to Montpellier— Madison's 
Feebleness— His Views on Slavery 220 

XIII— LAST DAYS AT MONTPELLIER 

Shadows gathering over Mrs. Madison's Path— Death 
of Jefferson— Breaking up of the Household at Monti- 
cello— Death of James Monroe— Death of Madison's 
Mother— Increasing Feebleness of Madison— His Death 
and Burial — Resolutions offered in Congress— Letters 
to and from President Jackson 237 

Xiy-WASHINGTON ONCE MORE 

Lafayette Square — Dolly Madison's House — The 
White House Twenty years after— Differing Estimates 
of Mrs. Madison's Age— Her Poverty — Kindness of 
Daniel Webster — Levees in the House on Lafayette 

Square — President Polk's Reception 253 

xiii 



CONTENTS 
Xy—OLD AGE AND DEATH 

Misconduct of Payne Todd — Faithful Care of Anna 
Payne — Mrs. Madison's Autographs — Wedding of 
Richard D. Cutts, Jr. — Mrs. Madison joins the Epis- 
copal Church — Her last Days— Her Will —Death — 
Funeral from old St. John's Chapel — The Buryiug- 
ground at Montpellier 267 



DOLLY MADISON 



DOLLY MADISON 



CHILDHOOD 

" The swallows must have twittered too 
Above her head ; the roses blew 
Below, no doubt ; and sure the South 
Crept up the wall and kissed her mouth, — 
That wistful mouth which comes to me 
Linked with her name of Dorothy." 

It would have been a bold soothsayer who 
had ventured to predict a brilliant social and 
worldly career for the little maiden who in 
Revolutionary days went tripping along the 
forest paths, under the shadow of Virginia 
pines, to the old field-school in Hanover County, 
where Dolly Payne learned her A B C*s. 

In truth, no one could have looked less 
frivolous than this demure school-girl, with the 
sober gown reaching to the toes of her shoes, the 
long gloves covering her dimpled elbows, and 
the linen mask and broad-brimmed sun-bonnet, 
hiding her rosy face. Yet an eye trained to 
fortune-telling might perchance have caught a 
glimpse of a glittering chain about the white 
I 1 



DOLLY MADISON 

neck under the close-pinned kerchief, and 
guessed the guilty secret of hidden finery which 
it held, and which gave the lie to the profes- 
sion of a renounced vanity which her garb 
suggested. 

If any one was responsible for Dolly Payne's 
lapse from the severe simplicity of the sect of 
Friends in after years, it must have been the 
worldly-minded grandmother who, in this early 
time, supplied the bits of jewelry worn thus 
under the rose of Dolly's blushes. 

The sins of vanity and secretiveness met with 
the retribution which such wickedness merited, 
and on one of these fine summer days, after 
a woodland wandering, the chain and bag and 
finery were all missing, and the guilty little 
heart was ready to burst with grief over the 
loss of its treasures. There was one person at 
least to whom the culprit could carry the story 
of her affliction, — one with ear always open and 
heart always full of sympathy for the child who, 
as a baby, had been laid in her arms and hushed 
on her faithful black breast. This was " Mother 
Amy," a typical southern " mammy," whose 
turbaned head had nodded many a night from 
dusk till dawn over little Dolly's cradle while 
her soft negro-voice crooned lullabies. But 
that was in the days of Dolly's babyhood ; 
years before she grew into a school-girl, indif- 
2 



I 



I 



CHILDHOOD 

ferent to books and fond of dress, as she con- 
tinued to be, in her simple, natural fashion to 
the end of life. 

His Majesty, King George III., still ruled 
in America when little Dorothy Payne was 
born, and it was in His Majesty's Province 
of North Carolina that her blue baby eyes un- 
closed like spring violets, on the twentieth of 
May in the year 1768.^ 

The child was named Dorothea in honor of 
Dorothea Spots wood Dand ridge, daughter of 
Nathaniel West Dandridge, and grand-daughter 
of the long remembered Governor Alexander 
Spotswood. Nine years after the birth of her 
little namesake, this lady became the wife of 
the famous orator Patrick Henry, and later of 
Judge Edmund Winston, both cousins of Dolly 
Payne's mother. By her marriage with Patrick 
Henry she added nine children of her own to 
the six left him by his first wife. 

Large families were the fashion in old 
Colony days, and by every hearth -stone, of rich 
and poor alike, played little children in num- 
bers which our degenerate age would reckon 
intolerably burdensome. Dolly Payne's future 

1 I have accepted this date which is given upon her tomb- 
stone, iu preference to the one more generally received, of 
1772, for many reasons; chiefly because Mrs. Madison was 
universally spoken of among her contemporaries as over 
eighty at the time of her death which occurred in 1849. 



DOLLY MADISON 

husband, James Madison, was the oldest of many 
brothers and sisters, and Dolly, herself the eld- 
est daughter, was followed by a train of younger 
children to whom, in after years, she showed 
herself a most affectionate and devoted sister, 
as their mutual letters amply prove. 

Although the chances of a parental visit 
placed her birth in North Carolina, Dolly Payne 
had good right to call herself a child of that 
Virginia which she loved so well. A Virginian 
she was both by lineage and residence. Her 
grandfather, John Payne, was an English gen- 
tleman of wealth and liberal culture, who came 
over to Virginia and planted himself in the 
county of Goochland, which lies along the 
northern shore of the James River above Rich- 
mond. He took to wife Anna Fleming. This 
Colonial dame is alleged to have been a descend- 
ant of the Earl of Wigton, a Scotch nobleman ; 
but this is disputed, and as Virginians of that 
day were wont to trace their ancestry to the 
aristocracy of Great Britain as naively as the 
Roman emperors derived theirs from the gods, 
this genealogy must be taken with a grain of 
salt by sober students of history. Of Scottish 
descent, however. Mistress Fleming undoubt- 
edly was. Her son, John Payne, junior, the 
father of Dorothy, migrated in his turn to a 
plantation in North Carolina where he met, 



CHILDHOOD 

courted, and married Mary, daughter of Wil- 
liam Coles, who came from Enniscorthy, a 
town on the banks of the river Slaney, in 
County Wexford, Ireland. 

Thus the three kingdoms blended their di- 
verse strains of blood in the little maiden 
who slipped into life in the Colony of North 
Carolina on that May day in the latter part 
of the last century, and traces of each showed 
themselves in her character, as it developed. 
If any one of these strains predominated, it 
was that, I should say, which came to her 
through Mary Coles, to which she owed her 
laughing Irish eyes, her heavy eyebrows and 
long lashes, her black curling hair, the bril- 
liancy of her skin, and perchance, the smooth- 
ness of her tongue, which, despite its tutoring 
in the plain " thee " and " thou " of Quaker 
speech, and the strictness of Quaker truth-tell- 
ing, always suggested in its softness an ances- 
try not unacquainted with the groves and the 
magic stone of Blarney. 

Shortly after his marriage with Mary Coles, 
whom he had wooed and won in the teeth of 
many rivals, John Payne the younger returned 
to Virginia and settled upon an estate in 
Hanover County, which lies north of the James 
River to the eastward of Goochland where his 
father's home was situated, and at no great 

5 



DOLLY MADISON 

distance from Coles Hill, the maiden home of 
his bride. Here, in a mansion somewhat 
grander than its neighbors, as we may judge 
from Mrs. Madison's memories of it, with its 
brick outbuildings and its monumental mantels 
of marble, John Payne lived during the child- 
hood of his oldest daughter. On this Hanover 
County plantation, with no large town nearer 
than Richmond, the little Dorothy, far from 
the world and its distractions, passed the days 
of her early youth in that close companionship 
with nature which makes the surest foundation 
for a happy life, as she herself recognized when, 
after the lapse of half a century, she wrote to 
her sister Anna, from her estate at Montpellier, 
" I wish, dearest, you had just such a country 
home as this. I truly believe it is the happiest 
and most true life, and would be best for you 
and for your children." 

It is difficult for us, who live in the age of 
steam and electricity, when the round world is 
circled by iron rails and telegraph wires, to 
bring vividly before our minds the isolation of 
such an estate as that of the Paynes in Colonial 
Virginia. Even down to the time of the Revo- 
lution, roads in the southern colonies were few 
and rudely made, and the rivers continued to be 
the principal highways. Autumn rains and win- 
ter winds made travel an affair of difficulty and 



CHILDHOOD 

danger, and the inhabitants of the plantation 
were shut in for weeks together to the society 
of a small circle of whites and a retinue of 
black servants, whose quarters were often 
merrier than the halls of the mansion-house. 

The only relief from the monotony was the 
coming of a visitor from the outside world ; 
and when the packet " tied up " to the wharf 
at the foot of the tobacco-field, or the soli- 
tary rider lifted the latch of the five-barred 
gate with the handle of his riding-whip, there 
was much joyous excitement within the house- 
hold, — negro servants hastily donned their 
new jackets, turbans and fresh aprons were 
brought out, and a smiling train waited on the 
steps behind the hospitable master and mistress 
to do honor to the coming guest. The wel- 
come extended to him was as sincere as it was 
hearty, and he could scarcely make too long 
a stay for the pleasure of his host. The best 
the house contained was at his service, and 
every energy was exerted for his entertainment. 
The amusements of those old country-houses, 
as a rule, were of a very primitive and simple 
nature, but they had one great advantage which 
ours often lack, they did amuse. 

I hold in my hand the journal of a young lady 
of Virginia who jotted down her daily doings 
and experiences during a series of visits which 



DOLLY MADISON 

she paid to hospitable homesteads in the Old 
Dominion, in the year 1784, when she, like 
Dorothy Payne, was some sixteen summers 
old. It is full of mirth and running over with 
laughter and jollity, — and all over what ? — A 
performance on the '' Forte-pianer " ; a moon- 
light walk; the selecting of sweethearts by 
thistle-blowing; a dance of half a dozen couples; 
a ride on horseback to a neighboring estate. 

" I must tell you," she writes on one occa- 
sion, " of our frolic after we went in our 
room. We took it into our heads to want to 
eat : well, we had a large dish of bacon and 
beaf" (you see the Virginia maid of olden 
time was not strong in spelling), " after that a 
bowl of sago-cream, and after that an apple- 
pye in bed." As though that were not enough ! 
But no : " After this we took it in our heads to 
eat oysters. We got up, put on our rappers 
and went down in the seller to get them. Do 
you think Mr. Washington did not follow us 
and scear us just to death ! We went up tho' 
and eat our oysters." 

With such merry-making country life might 
prove gay enough for the most frivolous and 
worldly minded young person ; but it was a 
different matter at the plantation of John 
Payne, who held the tenets of the Society of 
Friends in their strictest sense, and discoun- 



CHILDHOOD 

tenanced as firmly as any Puritan all worldly 
amusements. Yet despite the dearth of excite- 
ments his daughter Dolly found the entertain- 
ments of the old plantation quite satisfying to 
her simple tastes, and in after life she loved 
to dwell on these early days and declared them 
full of happiness. 

The training of the house-servants, the care 
of the sick, the superintendence of the cooking 
and endless needle-work made up the serious 
occupation of the Colonial dame in Virginia, 
and Dolly Payne as the eldest daughter of the 
family was early instructed in all these gentle 
arts of housewifery. Her mental training was 
amply provided for according to the standards 
of the time by an education covering the ac 
quirements of reading, writing, and an uncer- 
tain quantity of arithmetic. Writing at least 
was thoroughly taught, for her autograph 
letters show a smooth, flowing hand, almost 
too clear and self-committing, for, if the truth 
must be told, our Dolly might well have imi- 
tated the indistinct chirography of the youth 
who said he did not dare to write well, lest 
folk should find out how he spelled. To the 
end of her life she continued to violate the 
canons laid down by Noah Webster and Lindley 
Murray. Uncle she spelled with a " k ". Her 
weather was " propicious." She corresponded 

9 



DOLLY MADISON 

with her dressmaker about new " cloaths," and 
she wrote tenderly of a friend who was suffer- 
ing " with a bile on her arm." 

Let not the lip of the nineteenth-century 
college-bred woman curl in scorn over these 
little lapses, which must be set down to the 
charge of the age rather than of the individ- 
ual. The standard of female education when 
Dolly Payne was a girl, had at least the merit 
of being quite comprehensible and compara- 
tively easy of attainment. Two questions only 
were to be answered : First, what would make 
her most sought as a wife ? Second, what would 
make her the best help-meet, wife, and mother ? 
From beginning to end, her intellectual devel- 
opment was regarded from the point of view 
of its pleasingness or usefulness to man. 

" In all nations," writes Noah Webster at 
this epoch, " a good education is that which 
renders the ladies correct in their manners, 
respectable in their families, and agreeable in 
society." Some knowledge of arithmetic, as 
well as the rudiments of geography, he consid- 
ers desirable. " Belles-lettres learning seems 
to correspond with the dispositions of most fe- 
males," he says, " and a taste for reading and 
especially writing poetry should be cultivated 
as a vent for superfluous emotion." He urges 
that accomplishments, such as music and 

10 



CHILDHOOD 

dancing, be strictly subordinated, and adds 
convincingly : " My fair friends will pardon 
me when I declare that no man ever marries 
a woman for her performance on a harpsichord 
or her figure in a minuet." 

As to education, the gentlemen themselves 
had none too much to boast of, especially 
among these descendants of the Cavaliers, 
whose schools were their saddles. John Ran- 
dolph, who was a contemporary of Dolly Madi- 
son, declared in after life that the first map 
he ever saw was one of Virginia, of which 
he obtained a glimpse when he was nearly 
fifteen, and that he never until the age of man- 
hood possessed any treatise on geography other 
than an obsolete gazetteer. " I never was 
with any preceptor, one only excepted," he 
said, " who would deserve to be called a Latin 
or Greek scholar, and I never had any master 
of modern languages, but an old Frenchman 
(some gentleman's valet, I suppose) who could 
neither write nor spell." 

When John Randolph and Dolly Payne were 
children the thoughts of all their elders were 
so absorbed in pressing questions of great 
moment that comparatively little time or at- 
tention was bestowed on education. Every 
young girl was occupied in making clothing 
for soldiers, and every lad big enough to 
11 



DOLLY MADISON 

carry a musket had shut up his school-books 
and shouldered his gun. So it was in Han- 
over County over which Tarleton rode with his 
raiders. Whilst little Dorothy was learning her 
book and strolling through green fields and 
sun-dappled woodland paths, playing with her 
little sisters on the bank of the stream, or 
mourning in secret with her head on Mother 
Amy's breast for the loss of her bits of finery, 
great matters were stirring in the outside 
world beyond the gates of the plantation: 
John Payne, forgetful of his Quaker peace 
principles, or believing them overruled by the 
necessity of his country, had buckled on his 
sword and ridden away to become a captain in 
the Continental Army. Patrick Henry was 
thundering out his denunciation of British 
oppression in the Continental Congress ; and 
James Madison, destined in the dim future 
years to be bound by such close ties to the 
little Hanover County maid, was making his 
entrance into public life, first, as a member 
of the Virginia Committee of Safety, and later, 
as a delegate to the Virginia Convention where 
he played an important part in the drafting of 
the famous Bill of Rights. 

Children as young as Dolly Payne shared the 
enthusiasm and anxieties of their parents in 
this great life-and-death struggle. Babies 

12 



CHILDHOOD 

played by the door-step at drilling; mimic 
train-bands marched and counter-marched on 
nursery battle-fields, and when a day of fasting 
and prayer was set apart in Virginia solemnly 
to invoke the aid of Almighty God in the 
great undertaking of the war, George Mason 
wrote home to a friend : " Tell my dear little 
family that I desire my three eldest sons and 
my two eldest daughters may attend church in 
mourning." 

Thus, little children all over the broad land, 
from Massachusetts to Georgia, were thrilling 
with the joys and sorrows of the public, and 
thus, when the Revolution came to an end leav- 
ing the States united, it was the good fortune of 
Dorothy Payne to belong to the first generation 
of patriots, — of those who grew up with the 
ideal of a country ; with an intense loyalty, not 
to a province, but to a nation. " British oppres- 
sion," exclaimed her kinsman, Patrick Henry, 
" has effaced the boundaries of the several Colo- 
nies ; the distinctions between Virginians, Penn- 
sylvanians. New Yorkers, and New Englanders, 
are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an 
AmericanJ^ 



13 



n 

A QUAKER GIRLHOOD 

It is easy to understand why John Payne, 
having become a stanch Friend, began to find 
the clime of his native Virginia uncongenial to 
his spiritual nature. The Virginia planters, as a 
rule, were distinctly non-religious, if not irreli- 
gious. The supremacy of the Church of Eng- 
land in the southern Colonies had fallen with the 
fall of England's political power. Church build- 
ings lay in ruins; baptismal fonts had been 
transformed into watering troughs ; the commu- 
nion chalice was used to hold the morning dram ; 
rust covered the bells which once summoned 
congregations to praise and prayer, and the 
parsons had fled away over seas with none to 
bid them good-speed or to waste a lament over 
their departure. Yet this downfall of the Es- 
tablished Church had not made dissent popular. 
The feeling was still prevalent which inspired 
the remark made to Madison : " A man may be 
a Christian in any church, but a gentleman 
must belong to the Church of England." 
1* 



A QUAKER GIRLHOOD 

From the beginning, Quakers especially had 
been looked upon with an intolerance, strange 
in view of the peacefulness of the doctrines of 
the sect. In early Virginia history we find it 
set down as a crime against a citizen that he 
had shown himself " very loveing" to Quakers ; 
and again we read of a court of life and death 
consisting of the Governor of the Province and 
any three of the sixteen councillors, " whereat 
are tried Quakers and non-conformists." 

All this actual persecution was a thing of the 
past long before John Payne came to the reso- 
lution of quitting Virginia. In 1717 the King 
repealed the law prohibiting the assemblage of 
Quakers, and the famous Bill of Rights which 
Madison helped to frame, distinctly declared 
that " religion, or the duty we owe to our Crea- 
tor, and the manner of discharging it, can be 
directed only by reason and conviction : not by 
force or violence ; and, therefore, all men are 
equally entitled to the free exercise of religion 
according to the dictates of conscience." 

There is a wide gulf between toleration and 
sympathy, however, and it was quite natural that 
John Payne should look longingly to the com- 
panionship of his spiritual kindred who dwelt 
on the banks of the Schuylkill and the Delaware. 
He desired, moreover, educational advantages 
for his children greater than the plantation life 

15 



DOLLY MADISON 

of Virginia could afford, and therefore after a 
preliminary visit, which he and his wife made to 
Philadelphia, in the spring of 1779, he decided 
definitely to break the old ties and take up his 
residence in the North. 

His first preparation for the important change 
which he contemplated, was the setting free of 
all his blacks, whose condition of slavery had 
long weighed heavily upon his conscience. 
Some of these servants, however, refused to 
accept their liberty, and prayed their master to 
take them with him to his new home in Phila- 
delphia. Among these was Mother Amy, 
who was at last accorded the privilege of con- 
tinuing in the service of the family with the 
proviso that she should be paid for her labor. 
The wages thus received she frugally laid away, 
and at her death bequeathed the sum of five 
hundred dollars to her mistress. 

Having thus, for conscience sake, given up 
that large share of his property which lay in 
slaves, John Payne set his household in order 
for the journey, which to him was more like a 
pilgrimage, to the " City of Brotherly Love." 
The distance, set down on the map as some two 
hundred miles, conveys little notion of what 
that journey involved of difficulty, discomfort, 
and even danger. Travel by packet sloop was 
the most comfortable mode of conveyance, but 

16 



A QUAKER GIRLHOOD 

slow and tedious. Moreover, these packets plied 
only between important points, and passage in 
them was not to be had without much prear- 
rangement and tedious delay. 

Yet travel by land was still more difficult 
and fatiguing. Outside Philadelphia lay black 
and treacherous quagmires, in which the horses 
floundered and struggled for hours, making no 
progress towards getting out, while some of the 
hills were so steep that wagons must pause till 
other teams came to their assistance. These 
wagons had no springs, and the unlucky pas- 
sengers were jolted from side to side as the 
wheels of the vehicle rolled over rocks or sank 
to the hubs in mud. Progress was so slow that 
days and even weeks were consumed in journeys 
which can now be accomplished in a few hours. 

John Payne, whether he had travelled by 
packet down the James from Richmond and up 
the weary length of Chesapeake Bay, or by 
coach through Alexandria and Baltimore, must 
have felt that all the hardships of his pilgrim- 
age were rewarded, and that he had reached his 
Mecca when tlie roofs and steeples of Phila- 
delphia rose before his view, on the shores of 
the Schuylkill. 

An entry upon which I chanced in an old 
diary, kept by one of the Paynes' neighbors, 
enables me to fix exactly the time of this mi- 

2 17 



DOLLY MADISON 

gration; for under date of July ninth, 1783, 
Elizabeth Drinker notes among the events of 
the day : '' John Payne's Family came to reside 
in Philadelphia." 

At the time of his northward migration, at the 
close of the Revolutionary War, Philadelphia 
was the metropolis of America, a thriving town, 
with a population of thirty-two thousand inhabi- 
tants. Its houses numbered over four thousand, 
most of which sheltered well-clad, well-fed, well- 
to-do citizens, " free-livers on a small scale, 
and prodigal within the compass of a guinea." 
Small as the city was in comparison with its 
extent and magnitude to-day, it was even then 
not destitute of fine buildings and historic spots. 
Dolly Payne's eyes, unused to city sights, must 
have opened wide at her first glimpse of Christ 
Church, with its quaint steeple, and its famous 
chimes of bells, imported out of England at a 
cost of nine hundred pounds ; at sight of the 
old Court-House ; of Carpenters Hall, and the 
State-House, where America's independence 
had its birth. On the banks of the Delaware, 
at Shackamaxon, near the Governor's house, 
the Treaty-Elm was still standing to call up be- 
fore the girl's youthful imagination the vision 
of William Penn, with his blue silk sash about 
his waist, surrounded by the Indians, " arranged 
in form as a half moon." 

18 



A QUAKER GIRLHOOD 

Other sights upon which her eyes rested were 
less beautiful and less elevating in their associ- 
ations. At the west end of the Market, on 
Third Street, stood a platform, raised from the 
ground some eight or ten feet for the benefit of 
the curious, and in its centre rose two rude in- 
struments of punishment, — the whipping-post 
and the pillory. Here, on Saturday, which was 
high market-day, between ten and eleven in the 
morning, the miserable victims of the law stood 
with head and arms ignominiously pinioned, or, 
still worse, with clothes stripped to the waist 
and backs bleeding from the strokes of the 
lash, while school-children looked on with 
eager curiosity as at a spectacle. 

Dolly Payne's heart was far too tender to 
take pleasure in any such scenes of suffering. 
More to her taste were the strolls along the 
river side or over the western Commons, or, 
best of all, on the shady side of Chestnut Street, 
when the belles and beaux were taking their 
afternoon promenade. Here the young fash- 
ionables congregated in great numbers and al- 
ways attired as for a dress parade. The men 
were arrayed in very tight small-clothes and 
silk stockings, with pointed shoes ornamented 
with shining buckles. Their waistcoats were 
often of bright colors, and the outer coats with 
several little capes were adorned with silver 

19 



I 



DOLLY MADISON 

buttons, from whose size and number the 
owner's wealth might be guessed. Old men 
carried gold-headed canes, which, being a badge 
of gentility, were always very much in evidence. 

The women were attired even more gor- 
geously than the cavaliers who bowed and 
flourished and scraped before them. Their 
gowns of brocade were of a prodigious fulness 
as needs must be when the hoop spreads out 
like a balloon. The musk-melon and calash 
bonnets were of correspondingly wide dimen- 
sions, and altogether a woman prepared for 
the promenade resembled a ship under full 
sail. 

Doubt not that Dolly Payne's quick eye 
took in every clock of the dames' bright 
colored stockings, as they peeped from beneath 
the petticoats, and counted the rands in their 
white shoes, and watched the flashing of their 
ear-drops, and secretly wished that some of the 
finery and the gayety might fall to her lot, little 
dreaming that some day she herself would be 
the leader of the fashion, and the arbiter of 
the gay world. Now it all seemed very far 
off to the little unknown Quaker maiden, who 
had been taught that sober apparel was part of 
religion. 

Simplicity of dress was earnestly and con- 
stantly urged upon all the attendants at meet- 

20 



A QUAKER GIRLHOOD 

ing, but human nature is not to be regulated 
by creed or formula, and, in spite of all the 
prayers and exhortations of the Friends, their 
women-folk continued to love fine apparel, yes, 
and to buy and wear it too, under the very 
shadow of the broad brims which shoolv with 
disapprobation. Men as well as women some- 
times donned gay apparel, but they were much 
condemned, and the limpness of their principles 
won them the appellation of " Wet Quakers." 

The dwellings of the Friends, like their 
dress, sometimes lapsed into the vanity of 
adornment, but as a rule they were simple and 
substantial without and within. They stood 
in rows and were all of the same pattern. 
Each had its little porch in front where in 
warm weather the family was wont to sit of an 
evening, and where much of the social inter- 
course of the neighborhood was carried on. 
The maidens dressed in their best seated them- 
selves here in bright afternoons, and the young 
men declared it quite an ordeal to pass up and 
down the street under fire of their glances. 

The interiors of the houses were as monot- 
onous as the exteriors. The lower floor had 
two rooms. The front one was the shop or 
office, according to the calling of the owner. 
The room at the back of this, with white- 
washed walls and sanded floor, was the fam- 



DOLLY MADISON 

ily living room, and the placid pleasures 
enjoyed there quite justified Montaigne's ob- 
servation, that one is never so well off as in 
the back shop. Here the father, mother, and 
children gathered at meals, and the chance 
guest who dropped in to take " pot luck " with 
the family, was welcomed to an easy chair by 
the open fire, or the Franklin stove lately come 
into use ; but, on the occurrence of that awful 
solemnity, known as a tea-party, to which the 
neighbors were bidden by special invitation, 
the company met in the frigid upper room, on 
the second story, where in all tlie gorgeousness 
of rustling petticoats and fluttering ribbons, the 
feminine guests gathered about the slender- 
legged tea-tables, and partook daintily, with 
extended little finger, of the crisp rusks and 
the fragrant tea sipped from egg-shell china. 
Straight-backed were these dames as the chairs 
wherein they sat; and, indeed, the luxurious- 
ness of seats was a matter of trifling conse- 
quence, since it was a point of decorum never 
to lean back or seek any support for the spine 
or the shoulders. In every portrait of Mrs. 
Madison and her contemporaries, I note a state- 
liness of carriage, unfamiliar in our generation, 
and due doubtless to that early training. 

When Dolly Payne was young, Philadelphia 
society was divided into three different classes ; 



A QUAKER GIRLHOOD 

first, the old English families, such as the 
Chews and Conynghams, the Hamiltons and 
Willings ; then those who constituted the Rev- 
olutionary aristocracy, including the Butlers, 
Boudinots, Mifflins, and McKeans (one of whom, 
the lively Sally, became an intimate friend of 
Dolly and her sisters), and last, but by no 
means least, that solid Quaker element, led by 
the Morrises, Logans, Shippens, Lloyds, and 
Pembertons, with whom the family of John 
Payne naturally found their affiliations. 

Prominent among them were the Drinkers, 
who were bound to the Paynes by many ties of 
early association, for Elizabeth Drinker's father, 
like the father of Mary Payne, was a native of 
County Wexford, in " The Old Country," and 
" Molly Payne," when preparing for the move 
to Philadelphia, had lodged at Mrs. Drinker's 
hospitable house on the corner of Front Street 
and Drinker's Alley. The Payne children were 
at once adopted into the circle of the Drinker 
young people, and were included in the various 
driving and sailing expeditions which made 
up the sum of gayeties deemed appropriate for 
Quaker boys and girls. 

On July tenth, 1784, Elizabeth Drinker re- 
lates in her journal, " Sally Drinker and Walter 
Payne, Billey Sansom and Polly Wells, Jacob 
Downing and Dolly Payne, went to our Place 

23 



DOLLY MADISON ' 

at Frankford. Sally and Josey Sansom and 
Nansy Drinker (from ' Par La Ville ') met 
them there — a squabble ! Nancy returned 
home in y*" evening, with her sister." 

One is inclined to suspect from the manner 
in which the young people are paired off, that 
the cause of the " squabble " may have been a 
bit of jealousy on Miss Nancy's part, of the at- 
tentions of Jacob Downing to Dolly Payne. If 
so, her feelings were pacified, for shortly after, 
Sally Drinker with John and Hannah Thomas 
set off under the charge of Henry Drinker, 
senior, for " Rawway," in a " coachee," followed 
by " J. Downing and Nancy in his chaise." But 
woe to Nancy if her hopes were raised by this, 
for on October nineteenth I read, " Fourth 
Day evening — J. Downing spoke to H. D. 
[Elizabeth's husband] on account of Sally ! " 

Some of the gayest and most delightful hours 
of Dolly Payne's social life were those which 
slie passed outside the town of Philadelphia, 
in the long visits paid to relatives living in the 
neighboring village of Haddonfield, New Jersey, 
situated a few miles from Camden, and reached 
by a horse-ferry from Philadelphia. The house 
where she visited is still standing on the old 
" King's Highway," and is rendered notable by 
having been the meeting place of the State 
Legislature and afterward of the Council of 

24 



A QUAKER GIRLHOOD 

Safety. This tavern, for such it was, passed 
after the Revolution into the hands of Hugh 
Creighton, and it was to him and his family 
that Dolly Payne paid her visits, which often 
lasted for weeks at a time. The Haddonfield 
young people counted her a great addition to 
their numbers, and no one of them entered more 
heartily into the enjoyment of summer picnics 
and winter sleigh-rides and quilting parties. 
During these visits she won many friends and 
lovers among the country beaux, who in their 
old age were wont to tell of her incomparable 
charms to the younger generation, and she in 
turn never forgot these acquaintances of her 
youth and in her days of power lent a helping 
hand to many a political aspirant, whose chief 
claim upon her kindness lay in his association 
with Haddonfield and " auld lang syne." 

For the first year or two after the removal 
from Virginia to Philadelphia, all went well 
with the Paynes. The character and eloquence 
of John Payne won for him a high standing, 
and he soon became a lay preacher or " Public 
Friend." On First Day, he exhorted within 
the walls of the meeting-house. There was 
neither pulpit nor choir in this bare and simple 
house of worship, but in front of the benches 
ran a long platform, and on this when the spirit 
moved, the exhorter stood, first having removed 



DOLLY MADISON 

the hat, worn, save for prayer and preaching, 
throughout the meeting. Both men and women 
were accustomed to exhort ; men occupying the 
section of the platform facing the men's side, 
and women standing before those of their own 
sex. A sweet-faced Quakeress, being asked by 
a scoffer how she explained the Pauline texts 
forbidding women to exhort in public, replied, 
with a gentle smile : " Oh, well, Friend, thee 
knows Paul was never partial to women." 

Very eloquent some of these preachers, both 
male and female, were. Dolly Payne used to 
declare in later life that the best sermons to 
which she had ever listened were those of 
Friend Samuel Wetherill, who was equally well 
known in meeting and in market-place, his busi- 
ness reputation being spotless, and the brand 
upon his goods — an old Quaker lady sitting by a 
spinning-wheel — being recognized everywhere 
as a standard mark recommending all jeans, 
fustians, everlastings, and " coatyngs," which 
bore it. On First Days, when the Paynes 
and Todds went to hear him, he preached in 
the Free Quaker Meeting-House, which is still 
standing at the southwest corner of Fifth and 
Mulberry Street, the building now occupied by 
the Apprentices' Free Library. 

Among the few dissipations of the youthful 
Friends was attendance at the Bank-Hill even- 

26 



A QUAKER GIRLHOOD 

ing meeting, coveted, it is to be feared, not sl* 
much for the benefits of its pious exhortations 
as for the opportunity it offered for subsequent 
words and glances between the youths and 
maidens ; but the elders, more strict than the 
Puritans themselves, discontinued the services 
" because of the lines of idle young men who 
waited about the doors to see the young women 
pass out." 

But, if these Friends partook of the Puritan 
sternness, they partook also of their sturdy stuff 
and their devotion to principle, regardless of 
consequence. A few years after John Payne's 
coming to Pennsylvania, he was called to share 
the obloquy incurred by the sect and State of 
his adoption, through their determined and out- 
spoken opposition to slavery. The hardest part 
of the trial to this loyal son of Virginia was 
that the abuse came from his beloved South. 
The trouble grew out of memorials on the sub- 
ject of slavery addressed to Congress by the 
Friends' Meeting and the Pennsylvania Soci- 
ety for the Promotion of the Abolition of 
Slavery. One of these memorials sets forth 
that the petitioners " earnestly entreat your 
attention to the subject of Slavery ; that you 
will be pleased to countenance the restoration 
of liberty to these unhappy men, who alone 
in this land of freedom are degraded into per- 

27 



DOLLY MADISON 

thpetual bondage, . . . and that you will step to 
the very verge of the power vested in you for 
discouraging every species of traffic in the per- 
sons of our fellow men." 

The answer to this memorial — the natural 
and inevitable answer, in the heated state of 
the public mind not yet quieted from the fear of 
the rupture of the Constitution — was an attack 
upon the memorialists. " What right had the 
Quakers," it was asked, " having refused to risk 
their lives or fortunes in the conflict, to seek 
to impress their views upon the Government ? " 
The Bible, which they interpreted so liberally, 
was metaphorically hurled at their heads, and, 
finally, it was declared on behalf of the South 
that the confederation was a compromise where- 
in each took the other, with its bad habits and 
respective evils, for better for worse ; the 
northern States adopting the South with its 
slaves, and the South accepting the North with 
its Quakers. 

Such taunts as these might well cut John 
Payne's heart, still loyal to Virginia as it was ; 
but his mind was already beginning to be bowed 
beneath a weight of more personal trouble. The 
setting free of his slaves had seriously dimin- 
ished his property, and the increased expenses 
of town-life, with the old habits of plantation 
hospitality, proved a great drain upon bis de- 

28 



A QUAKER GIRLHOOD 

pleted purse. Philadelphia was spoken of at 
this time as a place of " crucifying expenses." 
The foreign traveller pronounced the necessaries 
of life there far dearer than in Europe. The 
rent of a modest house was three hundred dol- 
lars a year ; the wages of a servant rose from 
ten to twelve dollars a month, — a great sum in 
those days, yet not sufficient to secure good ser- 
vice, as we may infer from the constant com- 
plaints, which fill the letters of the mistresses. 
Elizabeth Drinker, for instance, records one 
failure after another, but at length appears to 
think she has found quite a treasure, despite a 
trifling drawback. " Polly Nugent," she says, 
" was this afternoon bound to us by her mother. 
She has been with us a week and appears clever ; 
brought y'^ itch with her, which I hope we have 
nearly cured." 

With costly and ineffective service, with beef 
at thirteen pence the pound, fowls a dollar a 
pair, and other viands in proportion^ the ex^ 
penses of John Payne's family proved far heav- 
ier than he had foreseen, and the depreciation 
of the currency at the same time contributed to 
cut down his income. In an unlucky hour he 
determined to go into business, taking with him 
his son John, as partner. It was easy to fore- 
see the result of such a move on the part of a 
middle-aged planter, without business training. 

29 



I 



DOLLY MADISON 

He failed, and his failure signed his death-war- 
rant. 

But the gloom of his last years knew at least 
one gleam of brightness, and that was in the 
marriage of his daughter Dolly to John Todd, 
junior, a member, like himself, of the Society of 
Friends, — a young man of sterling character 
and not destitute of this world's goods. Dolly, 
at this time of her marriage, if we rightly reckon 
the date of her birth, was twenty-one, and her 
husband five years older. He was the third of 
his name, — his grandfather, John Todd, of New 
London Township, Chester County, having mar- 
ried Martha Wilson, and their son, his father, 
having married Mary Durbarrow, and settled in 
Philadelphia, where the young John Todd was 
born on the seventeenth of November, 1763. 
He was, therefore, twenty-six when, in the year 
1789, he courted Dolly Payne ; and twenty-seven 
when they were married in 1790. 

The wooing of these young folks has faded 
into the shadowy past and left no record by 
which we can trace the secrets of the maid- 
en's heart. Did she love him, or was the mar- 
riage made in obedience to the will of her father, 
who saw a providence in this offer coming from 
a man who had already won his confidence and 
respect ? Tradition says that Dolly's first an- 
swer was that she never meant to marry, but 

30 



A QUAKER GIRLHOOD 

this may have indicated much or little as we 
translate it. It seems an undoubted fact that 
marriage in the early times was more an affair 
of business than with our generation. In those 
days a man, having come of age and accumulated 
or inherited a sufficient amount of property for 
comfortable living, began to look about for a 
wife. Some years later Mrs. Madison herself 
wrote to Governor Coles, anent his wish to 
secure a wife, in much the same tone she would 
have used had he been in search of a house- 
keeper. She fears that whilst they deliberate 
the finest girls will be chosen by some brisker 
suitor, goes on to enumerate the damsels who 
are already selected, and ends by wishing him 
a success proportionate to his merits and long 
search. 

Probably, however, at the age of twenty, 
Dolly Payne's views on the subject of matrimony 
were of a more romantic cast than in those later 
years when she had seen more of the world. 
Perhaps, too, she already had begun to chafe un- 
der Quaker restrictions, and her gay, pleasure- 
loving nature hesitated to subdue itself for life to 
a drab-colored existence. Yet, when the matter 
was settled and the marriage definitely arranged, 
she seems to have accepted the situation cheer- 
fully enough. At the close of the year 1789, 
she " passed the first meeting," a somewhat for- 

31 



DOLLY MADISON 

midable ceremony, in which the Quaker maiden 
announced that slie proposed taking John Todd 
in marriage, and hereby offered her decision for 
the approbation of Friends. After this, the 
bride-elect was obliged to pass yet another 
meeting, declaring that her intention still con- 
tinued the same, and then, no objection being 
offered, the arrangements for the marriage were 
concluded. 

The wedding was solemnized in the Friends' 
Meeting-House, on Pine Street, on the seventh 
day of First Month, 1790, when January whit- 
ened the earth with a bridal-veil of snow ; but 
Dolly Payne wore no veil of lace or tulle, — 
like Bayard Taylor's (juaker bride, — 

Her wedding gown was ashen silk, 

Too simple for her taste. 
She wanted lace about the neck 

And a ribbon at the waist. 

It is hard to resist a feeling of pity for this 
young girl, so fond of everything gay and bril- 
liant, compelled to forego the dancing and 
wine-drinking, the stealing of slippers, and mis- 
chievous merry-making which marked wedding 
festivities among the world's people, for the de- 
corum and solemnity of the Quaker marriage 
in the bare-walled meeting-house, where, with 
neither priest nor chanting choir, this man and 

32 



A QUAKER GIRLHOOD 

maid stood up together upon the " women's 
side," and declared before God, and the assem- 
bled Society, their intention of taking each other 
as husband and wife. 

After the simple Quaker fashion, the groom 
repeated the formula — " I, John Todd, do 
take thee Dorothea Payne to be my wedded 
wife, and promise, through divine assistance, to 
be unto thee a loving husband, until separated 
by death." The bride in fainter tones echoed 
the vow, and then the certificate of marriage 
was read and the register signed by a num- 
ber of witnesses including John, James, Mary, 
and Alice Todd, relatives of the bridegroom, 
John and Mary Payne, the bride's father and 
mother, together with her sisters Lucy, Anna, 
and Mary Payne, and sixty others. 

It was the custom for all who signed the 
marriage register to be entertained later at 
dinner and afterward at supper at the house of 
the bride's parents, and we may be sure that 
John Payne and his wife, who had brought 
their Virginia notions of hospitality with them 
to Philadelphia, did not fail to set forth a 
bountiful feast in honor of their daughter's 
wedding. 



33 



in 

FRIEND JOHN TODD 

The miniature of Dolly Todd, wife of Friend 
John Todd, junior, painted during the brief 
years of her first married life, and now in the 
possession of a collateral descendant, shows a 
youthful Quakeress in the bloom of early 
womanhood. Her neck is bare in front, save 
for the soft folds of a lace kerchief over the 
shoulders. The lips are smiling, and the eyes 
have a wistful shyness more bewitching than 
all the full-blown charms of the later portraits. 
Above the brow falls a little fringe of hair be- 
neath the tulle cap, whose band forms a sort 
of halo which, as a foreigner declared at fii'st 
sight of a Quaker head-dress, "has power to 
give to a Polly the air of a Virgin Mary." 
About the throat is wound a four-stranded 
chain, and the kerchief is held by a large old- 
fashioned brooch, — ornaments somewhat at 
variance with the Virgin Mary effect, and re- 
calling the love of finery which beset the little 
maid of Hanover County a dozen years before. 

34 



FRIEND JOHN TODD 

In truth Dolly Todd was not greatly changed 
in any way from her childhood days, for through 
life she carried the child's heart open to every 
passing impression, and to the last preserved 
all the freshness of feeling which belongs to 
early youth. The two years following her 
marriage with John Todd wrought many 
changes in her immediate family circle. Her 
younger sister Lucy, at the mature age of fif- 
teen, became the wife of George Steptoe Wash- 
ington, nephew of the President, and went 
back to Virginia to live at " Harewood," the 
Washington estate in Jefferson County, not 
very far from Harper's Ferry. A sad and sud- 
den change came to the Payne family too in 
the death of the beloved father, which befell in 
1792. It was a sorrowful end to so good and 
true a life, for he died bowed down by a sense 
of failure and disgrace. His small property he 
bequeathed entirely to his wife, leaving her sole 
executrix. 

His funeral was held, after the fashion of his 
sect, in the meeting-house ; thence, after the 
services, the corpse was borne by young men 
to the burial-ground. Arrived there, it was, ac- 
cording to Quaker custom, set down that the 
family might have one last look at the dead, 
and that " the Spectators have a sense of mor- 
tality by the occasion thus given them to reflect 

35 



DOLLY MADISON 

upon their own latter end." Neither stately 
vault nor costly monument marked the rest- 
ing place of the dead Friends. Crape and all 
outward badges of sorrow worn by survivors, 
were discountenanced as heathenish and out 
of harmony with the teachings of Scripture. — 
" What mourning," said their great apostle, " is 
fit for a Christian to have at the departure of a 
beloved relation or friend, should be worn in 
the mind which only is sensible of the loss." 

At the time of her father's death, Dolly Todd 
and her husband were living quietly, but in 
great comfort and content, at number fifty-one 
South Fourth Street, not far from the famous 
hostelry of the Indian Queen. John Todd is fre- 
quently spoken of as " a wealthy young lawyer," 
but I have failed to find record of any sources 
of revenue outside of his profession, and unless 
those days differed greatly from these, a bar- 
rister of six or seven and twenty was not likely 
to have accumulated a fortune from his fees. 

John Todd, senior, was a teacher, and ped- 
agogy, too, is a profession not ordinarily pro- 
ductive of great wealth, although, among the 
Friends as among the Puritans, it was counted 
most honorable and influential. There was a 
certain John Todd, whether this one or not is 
not absolutely certain, who literally as well as 
figuratively left his mark on the rising genera- 

36 



FRIEND JOHN TODD 

tion. He was one of the four masters in charge 
of the Friends' academy for boys situated in 
Fourth Street below Chestnut. 

One of his pupils recalling years afterwards 
his memories of this " Master of Scholars " de- 
scribes vividly the discipline he meted out to 
the unruly : — 

"After an hour of quiet time, everything going 
smoothly on — boys at their tasks — no sound but 
from the Master^s voice while hearing the one 
standing near him — a dead calm — when suddenly 
a brisk slap on the ear or face, for something or for 
nothing, gave dreadful note that an irruption of the 
lava was now about to take place — next thing to 
be seen was strap in full play over the head and 
shoulders of Philgarlic. The passion of the Mas- 
ter growing by what it fed on and wanting elbow 
room, the chair would be quickly thrust on one 
side, when with sudden grip, he was to be seen 
dragging his struggling suppliant to the flogging 
ground in the centre of the room. Having placed 
his left foot upon the end of a bench, he then with 
a patent jerk, peculiar to himself, would have the 
boy completely horsed across his knee, with his 
left elbow on the back of his neck to keep him 
securely on. In the hurry of the moment he would 
bring his long pen with him, gripped between his 
strong teeth (visible the while), causing the both 
ends to descend to a parallel with his chin and 
adding much to the terror of the scene. His face 
37 



DOLLY MADISON 

would assume a deep claret color, his little bob of 
hair would disengage itself and stand out, each par- 
ticular hair, as it were, up in arms and eager for 
the fray. 

^^ Having his victim thus completely at com- 
mand and all useless drapery drawn up to a 
bunch above the waistband, and the rotoundity 
and the nankeen in the closest affinity possible 
for them to be, then once more to the staring crew 
would be exhibited the dexterity of master and 
strap. By long practice he had arrived at such 
perfection in the exercise that, moving in quick 
time, the fifteen inches of bridle-rein {alias strap) 
would be seen after every cut elevated to a perpen- 
dicular above his head; whence it descended like 
a flail upon the stretched nankeen, leaving on the 
place beneath a fiery red streak at every slash." 

It may have been an early acquaintance with 
these severe educational methods, which led 
Dolly Todd to determine that her son should 
be brought up under milder sway, and to adopt 
the reactionary course of indulgence which led 
to his ultimate ruin. The boy who was des- 
tined to cause his mother many a heartache in 
after years was welcomed with the greatest 
rejoicings. His birthday fell on the twenty- 
ninth of February in the leap-year of 1792. 
A Quaker baby, he knew neither christening 
robe nor god-father, nor sprinkling of conse- 

38 



FRIEND JOHN TODD 

crated water, but in the silence of the birth- 
chamber his parents gave him, in honor of his 
mother's father, the name of John Payne Todd. 
A little more than a year after the birth of 
this son, in the summer of 1793, another child 
was born in the modest home in South Fourth 
Street. This baby son, named William Temple 
Todd, lay in placid unconsciousness upon its 
mother's breast, when a terrible pestilence 
spread its dark wings over the city without. 
The first death which attracted public attention 
in Philadelphia was that of Peter Aston who died 
on the nineteenth of August, after a strange and 
sadden illness. The next day several other 
deaths followed, and men began to shake their 
heads and whisper the dreadful name of " Yel- 
low-fever." Day by day the disease increased, 
and panic struck the heart of the boldest. In 
the bank, the market, or the church, nothing 
was talked of but the fever, its symptoms and 
its remedies. 

The doctors were at the end of their resour- 
ces. No suggestion was too absurd to be 
adopted in the effort to stop the ravages of the 
fatal disease. Disinfectants of all kinds, tar, 
camphor, and " thieves' vinegar " were used in 
vain. Still the pestilence advanced and claimed 
victims by the scores and hundreds. The whole 
city fell under the influence of the panic. Folk 

39 



DOLLY MADISON 

who at first bad crowded together to talk of 
their neighbors' ilbiess, now passed each other 
hurriedly and almost without recognition, on 
opposite sides of the street. " The old custom 
of hand-shaking," says a contemporary and 
member of the Committee of Public Safety, 
" fell into such general disuse that many shrank 
back with affright at even the offer of the hand. 
A person wearing crape or any appearance of 
mourning was shunned like a viper." The 
public gloom deepened. Bells tolled inces- 
santly, and funerals blocked the streets, till at 
last, by city ordinance, the burials were per- 
formed by night. The heat was unbearable. 
Business was at a standstill. Rich and poor 
alike had but one thought, — to escape with the 
utmost possible speed from the death-stricken 
town. A week after the outbreak of the fever, 
the removals began, and for weeks carts, wag- 
ons, " coachees," and chairs were occupied in 
transporting families and furniture into the 
country. 

Among this throng of motley vehicles was 
a litter bearing a young mother, the wife of 
John Todd and her new-born child. Their 
destination was Gray's Ferry, a charming 
wooded spot, on the banks of the winding 
Schuylkill, at the crossing of the Baltimore 
post-road ; near enough to the city to be acces- 

40 



FRIEND JOHN TODD 

sible, even for an invalid, vet out of immedi- 
ate danger of infection. At this time Gray's 
Ferry was the favorite suburban pleasure-re- 
sort of Philadelphians and was spoken of as 
"a prodigy of nature and art," — nature be- 
ing represented by a charming succession of 
dells and groves, while art appeared in the 
grottos and hermitages, Chinese bridges and 
flotilla of boats, which made the attractions 
of Gray's Inn and gardens. In summer the 
Philadelphians sailed down the river to sit 
under these trees and seek the coolness of the 
grottos, and in winter merry parties drove in 
sledges over ice and snow, sure of a warm 
welcome and a hot supper at the inn, where 
they might afterward, if they would, dance 
half the night away. 

Dolly Todd's young friends knew Gray's 
Ferry and its charms well. Elizabeth Drinker 
sets it down as a reprehensible thing that 
" Molly Drinker, Betsey Emlen, Sally Large, 
Geo. Benson, Rich^l Smith, Rich'^ Morris and 
Jona'' Hervey, were all at Gray's Ferry this 
afternoon, as Molly this evening informs me ; 
which I by no means approve of. Friends' 
children going in companies to public houses is 
quite out of character." 

Friends' children however went and con- 
tinued to go, fascinated by the amusements 

41 



DOLLY MADISON 

and the gayety and the fashion which in these 
days marked the resort. Literature as well as 
fashion paid its tribute to this spot, and a poem, 
inspiring to contemporaries but rather ridicu- 
lous to posterity, apostrophized it, in 1787, as 

" A seat removed from public strife and care, 
For which the Muse in gratitude has brought 
To Schuylkill's bank the Greek and Roman thought ; 
There to her Barlow gave the sounding string, 
And first taught Smith and Humphreys how to sing." 

Gray's Ferry may claim a somewhat more 
substantial title to fame than having taught 
Smith and Humphreys how to sing, in having 
been the scene of a grand reception given by 
the Pennsylvanians to Washington as he passed 
northward in 1789 to take the oath of office as 
President at New York. A queer old print 
shows the festive scene ; the floral arch, the 
flag with its thirteen stars floating beneath a 
liberty-cap, the river covered with row-boats, 
and the road with very stiff gentlemen on very 
restless horses. 

All this gay pageant was a thing of the past 
when Dolly Todd's litter crossed the bridge, and 
she in her weak condition had little strength for 
any impression, save of relief that the tedious 
journey was done, and that at last the terrible 
sights and sounds of the stricken city were left 
behind, and that she was safe among the trees 

42 



FRIEND JOHN TODD 

and the birds and the great healthy world of 
nature which was always dear to her. 

Having seen his wife and two little children 
transported to the peace and comparative 
security of this place, John Todd, like the true 
man he was, returned to the plague-stricken 
town to face its risks in the performance of 
his duty. He found the shadow of death fall- 
ing on his own household and arrived only in 
time to attend the dying bed of his father and 
mother. In these last days his father made 
a will wherein he appointed his two sons, John 
and James, and his friend '' Samuel Jones of 
this city, House-Carpenter," as his executors — 
He bequeathed to John the sum of five hun- 
dred pounds, and to his little grandsons, John 
Payne Todd and William Temple Todd, fifty 
pounds each. The residue of the estate was 
to be divided equally among his five grand- 
children ; but his silver watch was especially 
noted to be given to his son John, in trust 
for John Payne Todd, or in case of his death, 
for William Temple Todd. 

The sudden death of his father and mother 
might well have tried John Todd's courage 
and shaken his resolution ; but he did not 
falter. Friends and clients were calling upon 
him from all sides for assistance and he stayed 
to render it. To his wife's anxious protests he 

43 



DOLLY MADISON 

made answer, that let what might befall him 
these duties must be done, and after that he 
would never leave her again. 

He did indeed return to Gray's Ferry and to 
her, but only to die, and (still harder fate) to 
bring the dreaded disease to those he loved 
best. He died, or in the quaint language of an 
old Friend, " settled in the land of fixedness," 
on the twenty-fourth of October, 1793, and his 
young wife, who had recklessly thrown herself 
into his embrace regardless of danger, took the 
infection and lay at the point of death for 
three terrible weeks. When she recovered, it 
was to find herself a widow with only one 
child. Her baby as well as her husband had 
died, and thus doubly bereft, she struggled 
back to life beneath a heavy cloud of sorrow 
and depression. 

The autumn came and passed, — the frosts 
of November at length brought a surcease of 
the epidemic. The pestilence had spent its 
force. The death-list shortened, the quar- 
antine relaxed its strictness ; the same chairs, 
wagons, and "■ coachees " which had been driven 
with the haste born of fear along the roads 
leading out from Philadelphia, pausing neither 
for hill nor mire, now came slowly back 
again. The streets ceased to look like those 
of a city of the dead. Doors stood open 

44 



FRIEND JOHN TODD 

and lights shone behind the window panes at 
night. 

With the renewal of confidence, men began 
to be ashamed of their panic, and sought to 
atone for their suspicion and selfishness by 
increase of friendliness and cordiality. With 
sobered affections they strove to draw nearer 
together to hide the terrible gaps which over 
four thousand deaths had made in their ranks ; 
head-stones were raised in the burying-grounds, 
which, in the haste of the midsummer burials, 
was described as looking like a ploughed field. 
Soon all to outward eye went on much as 
before. Men bought and sold, the playhouse 
was reopened, and the accustomed ways of life 
ran on like a clock that has but been stopped 
for a day. But there were many for whom 
that clock would never strike again, and the 
tragedy of whose ending is all compressed into 
the printed names included in such death lists 
as that wherewith Matthew Carey closes his 
'' Short Account of the Malignant Fever, lately 
prevalent in Philadelphia," in which, in the old 
fine print on the yellow page, I read, — 

^^ John Todd, sen. — teacher and wife. 
John Todd, jun. — attorney at law." 

In November the will of John Todd, junior, 
was probated. It was found to antedate the 

45 



DOLLY MADISON 

will of his father by nearly three months, being 
drawn in early July before the birth of his 
second child. It consists of little more than 
the following simple statement : — 

' ' I give and devise all my estate, real and per- 
sonal to the Dear Wife of my Bosom, and first and 
only Woman upon whom my all and only affections 
were placed, Dolly Payne Todd, her heirs and 
assigns forever, trusting that as she has proved an 
amiable and affectionate wife to her John, She 
may prove an affectionate mother to my little 
Payne, and the sweet Babe with which she is now 
enceinte. My last Prayer is may she educate him 
in the ways of Honesty, tho' he may be obliged to 
beg his Bread, remembering that will be better to 
him than a name and riches. Having a great opin- 
ion of the integrity and honourable conduct of 
Edward Burd and Edward Tilghman, Esquires, my 
dying request is that they will give such advice and 
assistance to my dear Wife as they shall think pru- 
dent with respect to the management and disposal 
of my very small Estate, and the settlement of my 
unfinished legal business. I appoint my dear Wife 
executrix of this my will. 

'' Witness my hand and seal this second day of 
July in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven 
hundred and ninety three. 

<^JoHN Todd Juny'* seal. 



46 



¥ 



IV 

"THE GREAT LITTLE MADISON " 

The widow of John Todd returned to Pbila- 
delphia bowed down by the trouble which had 
fallen so suddenly upon her young life ; but in 
the fact that her life was young lay the secret 
of its swift rebound. Her sunny nature could 
not, if it would, tarry forever in the shadow, 
and her radiant youth refused to walk long in 
weeds. She was now twenty-five ; still young 
in all her feelings and with the added inde- 
pendence of the matron. It was in her wid- 
owhood that Dolly Todd found her girlhood, 
and within a few months after her husband's 
death we see her the centre of her little social 
world, and so universally admired that her 
friend jestingly bids her : " Hide thy face — 
there are so many staring at thee ! " 

In estimating Dolly Todd's social position 
and financial condition at this time we pass 
again into the cloud of obscurity which hangs 
about all her early life. The biographers of 
Madison speak of him as marrying a wealthy 

47 



DOLLY MADISON 

widow, and sketches of her own life represent 
her as on the crest of the wave of fortune and 
fashion. For my own part I find more inter- 
esting, as well as more credible, the witnesses 
who picture her in a humbler sphere, as going 
back with her little boy to live with her mother, 
and like the faithful, devoted daughter she was, 
to help her in the occupation of keeping board- 
ers which John Payne's loss of property had 
made necessary for this Yirginia lady as a 
means of support. 

The seat of Government was now established 
in Philadelphia, and as the distance of the re- 
moter parts of the country from the capital, 
combined with the difficulty of travel, kept the 
families of many public men at home. Repre- 
sentatives, Senators, and other officials were 
scattered about at taverns, more pretentious 
hotels, or boarding-houses. Yery uncomfortable 
residences, for the most part, they were. John 
Adams, then Vice-President of the United 
States, writes to his wife from one of these 
abiding places : '' What do you say ? Shall 1 
resign my office when I am three-score, or will 
you come with me in a stage-wagon, and lodge 
at a tavern in Fourth Street ? I must contrive 
something new against next winter." 

Fisher Ames wrote even more despairingly 
to his friendj Jeremiah Smith, begging him to 

48 



" THE GREAT LITTLE MADISON'* 

secure decent lodgings before his arrival. He 
intends, he says, to pass two days in New York, 
" and three more will, I trust, set me down in 
Philadelphia. Do not let me go down to the 
pit of the Indian Queen. It is Hades and 
Tartarus and Periphlegethon, Cocytus and 
Styx, where it would be a pity to bring all the 
piety and learning that he must have who 
knows the aforesaid infernal names. Pray 
leave word at the aforesaid Queen or any other 
Queen's where I may unpack my weary house- 
hold goods." 

Far more fortunate than John Adams or 
Fisher Ames, or any wretched denizen of ill- 
kept taverns, w^as Colonel Aaron Burr, for he 
was settled in the home-like lodgings presided 
over by Mrs. Payne, assisted, yes, surely assisted, 
by her beautiful daughter, Mrs. Todd. Colonel 
Burr was now a Senator, and nearing the height 
of power from which he was destined to fall so 
ignominiously. His personal reputation could 
hardly have been what it afterward became, 
else Mr. Madison would scarcely have chosen 
him to be his introducer at the house of a lady 
who had so impressed his fancy as he watched 
her at a distance that he ardently desired the 
honor of her acquaintance. In his old age 
Aaron Burr used to boast with a chuckle that 
it was he who made the match between James 

4 49 



DOLLY MADLSON 

Madison and Dolly Todd, and the boast was 
excusable, since few of his undertakings turned 
out so well, or did him so much credit. 

" Dear Friend," wrote Mistress Todd, all in 
a flutter, to her confidential friend, Mrs. Lee, 
one day in 1794 : " Thou must come to me, — 
Aaron Burr says that the great little Madison 
has asked to be brought to see me this even- 
ing." The eventful evening, destined to be 
so long remembered, arrived, and brought " the 
great little Madison." He came, he saw, — she 
conquered. 

Pretty Mrs. Todd might well feel flattered by 
attentions from such a source. James Madison 
was a man of parts (I like the good old phrase), 
one who had already won a more than national 
reputation. Five years earlier, the French tra- 
veller, Brissot de Warville, had written of him 
as of one well known in Europe. " Though 
young," said de Warville, " he has rendered the 
greatest services to Virginia, to the American 
Confederation, and to liberty and humanity in 
general." After a remarkably good guess at 
Madison's age, which he correctly placed at 
thirty-eight, the writer continues : '* He had, 
when I saw him, an air of fatigue. Perhaps it 
was the effect of the immense labors to which 
he has devoted himself for some time past." 
" His look," concludes the Frenchman, with his 

50 



"THE GREAT LITTLE MADISON" 

nation's love of a neatly turned compliment, 
and a nicely balanced sentence, " his look an- 
nounces a censor, his conversation discovers a 
man of learning, and his reserve is that of a 
man conscious of his talents and of his duties." 
The great service to his country and to man- 
kind, to which de Warville alludes, was, of 
course, the assistance he had given in the fram- 
ing; of the Constitution of the United States. 
That instrument, which a modern English 
statesman has pronounced the greatest work 
ever struck off by the mind of man in the same 
space of time, was, in large measure, the work 
of Madison. It was his profound familiarity 
with English Constitutional law which contrib- 
uted to form it, and it was his sound logic which 
defended it when it stood in grave danger. It 
fell to him to fight for it in the halls of his na- 
tive Virginia against such opponents as Patrick 
Henry, whose opposition began with the begin- 
ning of the preamble, and whose opening speech 
sounded the note of war, as he exclaimed, " Give 
me leave to demand what right had they to say 
' We the peopU; instead of ' We the States ! ' " 
The casting vote on the Constitution lay with 
Virginia, and Madison won it for the Union, and 
in winning it won for himself an undying fame 
to which his later honors could add little. " The 
Father of the Constitution " was the proudest 

51 



DOLLY MADISON 

title his country could bestow, and the man who 
in collaboration with Jay and Hamilton had 
produced the " Federalist " had no honors to 
seek. 

At the time when Mr. Madison asked for an 
introduction to Mrs. Todd he was forty-three 
years of age, — seventeen years older than the 
charming woman to whom he shortly deter- 
mined, as he himself would have said, "to pay 
his addresses." He could not be said to have 
lost his youth, for he had never had any youth 
to lose. The oldest of many children, he early 
assumed the responsibilities of manhood, and 
from his childhood was a model of prudence, 
wisdom, and moderation. At Princeton, where 
he was sent to college, he is said to have limited 
his sleep to three hours a day that he might 
give the additional time to study, and when he 
returned to his home he settled down gravely 
to the task of instructing the younger chil- 
dren, until he bestirred himself to enter public 
life. 

At thirty-two the first symptom of youth 
showed itself. He fell in love. The object of 
his affection was Miss Catherine Floyd, the 
daughter of General William Floyd, who lived 
on Long Island, in New York. General Floyd 
was one of the signers of the Declaration of 
Independence, and was a delegate to the Con- 

52 



"TEE GREAT LITTLE MADISON" 

tiuental Congress from the State of New York 
from 1774 to 1783. Mr. Madison formed an 
acquaintance with General Floyd, which led to 
an acquaintance with the general's daughter. 
This young lady he found so attractive that he 
soon made her a proposal of marriage, and she 
accepted him in spite of the fact that he was 
twice her age, as she had just passed her six- 
teenth birthday. 

Whether Mistress Catherine had been in- 
fluenced by her father or whether she had mis- 
taken her own heart, we know not, but we 
learn that she soon after fell desperately in 
love with a young clergyman who "hung 
round her at the harpsichord," and proved, 
perchance, a warmer wooer than the measured, 
moderate Madison. Certain it is that the 
fickle maid transferred her affections. Tradi- 
tion says that she sent her discarded lover a 
letter of dismissal which she sealed with a bit of 
rye-dough. This may have contained some hid- 
den jest ; but one can not fancy such liberty 
taken with the solemn young statesman, and 
in truth, it would have been ill jesting with a 
wounded heart. For the young lady's sake, let 
us hope it was the only seal that she could find, 
as was quite possible in those days. 

When Jefferson heard the news of his 
friend's disappointment, he Avrote him sympa- 

53 



DOLLY MADISON 

thetically enough, but with that philosophy so 
easily summoned to meet the misfortunes of 
others : " I sincerely lament the misadventure 
which has happened from whatever cause it 
may have happened ; should it be final, how- 
ever, the world presents the same and many 
other resources of happiness. You possess 
many within yourself; firmness of mind and 
unintermitting occupation will not long leave 
you in pain. No event has been more contrary 
to my expectations, and these were founded 
on what I thought a good knowledge of the 
ground ; but of all machines ours is the most 
complicated and inexplicable.'' The philoso- 
pher of Monticello had apparently quite for- 
gotten the old days at Williamsburg when he 
was mad for love of Rebecca Burwell, and 
poured forth long letters full of wild despair to 
his college friend and confidant, Jack Page. 

This misadventure in love lay ten years 
behind him on the journey of life when Mr. 
Madison called on Mrs. Todd, on that eventful 
evening in 1794, and his heart was free and 
ready to be taken captive by the beautiful 
young widow whose gown of mulberry satin, 
with tulle kerchief folded over the bosom, set 
off to the best advantage the pearly whites and 
delicate rose tints of that complexion which 
constituted the chief beauty of Dolly Todd. 

54 



''THE GREAT LITTLE MADISON." 

The two men who bowed before her in the 
candle-lighted parlor of her mother's house on 
that night, were singularly unlike in appear- 
ance as in character. Both were small of 
stature, though with a dignity of manner 
which atoned for lack of impressiveness in 
outward form ; but the resemblance went no 
further. Burr was full of grace, of charm, of 
vivacity, with mobile expressive features, and 
an eye potent to sway men against their will, 
and women to their undoing. Madison was 
slow, unimpassioned, and unmagnetic, yet with 
a twinkle in his mild eye which bespoke a dry 
humor. Burr was the younger of the two by 
five years, but at this time stood on a higher 
round of the ladder of fame, with, apparently, 
the better chance of being the first to reach 
the top. Burr was a Senator, while Madison 
was in the lower house, having been defeated 
in the contest for the seat of Senator from 
Virginia. In this case, as in so many others, 
however, the race was not destined to be to 
the swift, and the man who was to be at the 
head of the nation in the future days was not 
the brilliant, versatile, unscrupulous Burr, but 
the slow and steadfast Madison. 

It is to be set down to Dolly Madison's 
credit that behind the unimpressive exterior 
of this little man in the suit of black, set off 

55 



DOLLY MADISON 

with ruffled shirt and silver buckles, she was 
able to discover the real greatness and solid 
worth, so that when, not long after this first 
meeting, Mr. Madison declared himself openly 
as a suitor for her hand, she could not find it 
in her heart to say him '' nay." 

Just how soon her feelings began to respond 
to those of her admirer, history does not 
record. Those were days of brief widowhoods^ 
and there were few to cavil or to suggest that it 
followed hard upon, when, within a few months 
of the loss of her first husband, the rumor of 
Dolly Todd's second courtship began to creep 
abroad. Madison was rallied by his associ- 
ates upon his captivation, and the report of his 
engagement to the young widow was soon 
whispered about Philadelphia, and ere long 
reached the doors of the President's mansion ; 
whereupon Martha Washington sent for 
Dolly Todd and, with tlie familiar intimacy 
of a family connection (Dolly's sister having 
married her husband's nephew), proceeded to 
catechise her after a somewhat autocratic 
fashion. Was it true, she asked, that Mrs. 
Todd was engaged to James Madison ? Blushes 
and stammers cried her mercy, but my Lady 
Grand Inquisitor proceeded, bidding her con- 
fess without shame, for he would make her a 
good husband, and she might be happy with 

56 



''THE GREAT LITTLE MADISON" 

the approbation of the President and her 
august self. 

Evidently Mrs. Washington did not share 
the self-distrust in such delicate matters which 
marked the conduct of Washington himself, 
who, when asked to give advice in a similar 
affair, wrote, with his customary good sense, 
and more than his customary sense of humor : 
" For my own part, I never did nor do I 
believe I ever shall give advice to a woman 
who is setting out on a matrimonial voyage. 
First, because I never could advise one to 
marry without her own consent ; and, secondly, 
because I know it is to no purpose to advise 
her to refrain when she has obtained it. A 
woman very rarely asks an opinion, or requires 
advice on such an occasion, till her resolution 
is formed, and then it is with the hope and 
expectation of obtaining a sanction, not that 
she means to be governed by your disapproba- 
tion, that she applies." 

In Dolly Todd's case Washington and his 
wife were of one mind in approving of the alli- 
ance in question, and having received the royal 
permission to be happy, Mrs. Todd allowed her 
betrothal to James Madison to be formally pro- 
claimed, and arrangements were made for a 
speedy marriage. 

In the early part of September, 1794, the 

57 



DOLLY MADISON 

wedding party, consisting of Mr. Madison and 
Mrs. Todd, with her sister Anna Payne, a well- 
grown girl of twelve, and her little son, scarcely 
more than a baby, set out from Philadelphia 
for the home of Mrs. Todd's sister, Mrs. George 
Steptoe Washington, at Harewood, Virginia, 
where the wedding was to take place. 

A strange contrast this gay company, in coach 
and on horseback, with attendants and retain- 
ers all in holiday humor, must have offered to 
that other sombre procession which but a year 
before had moved slowly out from this same 
city, to the sound of tolling bells and booming 
guns, amid the white-faced and terror-stricken 
crowds, while she who was now the centre of 
all this life and gayety had then lain pale 
and weak in her litter, with her baby on her 
breast. One wonders if she gave it a thought 
as she drove along in her coach. If she did, 
she gave no sign. No woman ever understood 
better than Dolly Madison the art of adapting 
herself to the shifting scenes in the play of 
human life; and therein lay one considerable 
source of her success. 

Let us admit here, at the outset of her career, 
that she was not a great woman, — not of that 
stern stuff which formed some of the heroines 
of Revolutionary and Colonial days ; that she 
was not even a woman given to profound or in- 

58 



"THE GREAT LITTLE MADISON'' 

dependent thought, or to sifting opinions or 
weighing arguments. Why should she, when 
some stronger mind was always at hand to form 
her opinions for her ? Her nature was like a 
lake reflecting brightly whatever image was 
nearest, and when one by one all earthly images 
were withdrawn it lay, tranquil to the last, re- 
flecting Heaven. 

At the end of a week's journey, over roads 
winding picturesquely across the Susquehanna, 
through Baltimore town, over Maryland hills, 
and, at length, entering Virginia and Jeffer- 
son County, at the shore of the Potomac, Hare- 
wood was reached ; and there took place the 
event, of which, to the end of his days, Madi- 
son continued to speak as the most fortunate 
of his life. Dolly Payne Todd and James Madi- 
son were married on the fifteenth day of Sep- 
tember, 1794. The ceremony was performed 
not after the fashion of the Friends, but 
according to the rites of the Church of England, 
by the Rev. Dr. Balmaine, of Winchester, Vir- 
ginia, a connection, by marriage, of Madison. 
The wedding was followed by the usual festiv- 
ities, and bridesmaids and groomsmen danced 
and made merry in holiday attire. No record 
has come down to us of the costume of the 
bride and groom ; but it is a matter of course 
that Mistress Todd wore some such silver satin 

59 



DOLLY MADISON 

as that gown of hers reverently preserved to- 
day in a certain southern household, and we 
know that Madison wore ruffles of Mechlin lace, 
for the bridesmaids cut them up afterwards for 
mementos. 

Another bridegroom of the period who had 
the misfortune to lose his trunk on his wedding 
journey, has left an inventory of its contents, 
and as he was a great beau and made preten- 
sions to the highest fashion, we may conclude 
that it represented a modish wedding outfit 
for a gentleman in the ye^ir 1794. The list 
includes : " A light-colored broadcloth coat, 
with pearl buttons ; breeches of the same 
cloth ; ditto, black satin ; vest, swansdown buff, 
striped ; ditto, moleskin, chequer figure ; ditto, 
satin figured; ditto, Marseilles white; ditto, 
Muslinet figured ; undervest, faced with red 
cassimere ; two ditto, flannel ; one pair of flannel 
drawers ; one ditto, cotton ditto ; one pair black 
patent silk hose ; one ditto ; white ditto ; one 
ditto ; striped ditto ; ten or a dozen white silk 
hose ; three pair of cotton hose ; four pair of 
gauze ditto ; a towel ; twelve neck -kerchiefs ; 
six pocket handkerchiefs, one of them a ban- 
danna ; a chintz dressing-gown ; a pair of silk 
gloves ; ditto old kid ditto." ^ 

In the midst of the wedding festivities the 
newly married pair started in their coach on 

60 



''THE GREAT LITTLE MADISON'* 

the journey of a hundred miles or more, which 
lay between Harewood and the Madison estate at 
Montpellier (so Madison himself always wrote 
the name, insisting that the dropping of the 
second " 1 " was " a Yankee notion "). Few re- 
gions in the world are more beautiful than the 
one through which Mr. and Mrs. Madison drove 
in the blue autumn weather. Up the smiling 
Shenandoah Yalley their way ran, over the wall 
of the mountains and across the head waters of 
the Rappahannock, — up hill and down dale, 
past many a Colonial homestead perched upon 
its wooded knoll or nestling in the hollow 
of the hills, till at last their road ended be- 
fore the old-fashioned gateway of Montpellier, 
where, in the Blue Ridge country, about fifty 
miles north-west of Richmond, James Madison, 
Senior, had erected the first brick house ever 
built in Orange County. Then, as always, the 
chief charm of Montpellier lay outside its walls 
in the glorious stretch of fertile fields, framed 
in a setting of dark forest, and the great wall of 
mountains rising in full view from the portico. 
In this delightful retreat James Madison and 
his wife settled down for the first weeks of 
their married life, and to this mountain nook, 
"within a squirrel's jump of Heaven," their 
thoughts turned lovingly, and often yearningly, 
in the busy and tumultuous years which lay 

61 



DOLLY MADISON 

before them. From this time on, Montpellier 
and Montpellier alone, was Jiome to them, and 
Dolly Madison by her tact and sweetness thor- 
oughly disproved the saying that no house is 
large enough for two families ; for as long as 
her husband's father and mother lived, it was 
their home as well as their son's, and their son's 
wife was all that a daughter could be to them. 

As soon as Madison's marriage was made 
known, letters of congratulation began to pour 
in upon him and his bride. Three of these I 
quote. The first is from Bishop Madison, who 
writes to his nephew : — 

Williamsburg, Nov. 12th, 1794. 

My dear Sir, — I cannot refrain sending you 
my sincere congratulations, upon an Event, which 
promises you so much Happiness. It was my in- 
tention to have paid you a short Visit in Septem- 
ber, upon my Keturn from the Mountains, but 
heard, when in your Neighbourhood, that jovl were 
from Home, & engaged in the Pursuit which ter- 
minated so agreeably to yourself, & I trust also, 
to the Amiable Partner whom you have Selected. 
Present her too, if you please, with my Con- 
gratulations on & ardent wishes for your mutual 
Happiness. — 

With the most Sincere Esteem, I am 
D-" Sir y^ Friend 

J. Madison. 
62 



*'THE GREAT LITTLE MADISON"' 

An equally cordial letter followed in the next 
month from General Horatio Gates, the hero of 
Saratoga, who had formerly lived in Virginia, 
but in 1790 had manumitted his slaves, and 
moved to New York : — 

New York, 27*'^ December, 1794. 
My dear Sir, — Permit me thus late to present 
you, & M" Madison, mine, & my Mary's Compli- 
ments of Congratulation; and to wish ye both 
every Earthly Felicity. Make us also happy by 
saying you will both pay a Visit to Kose Hill next 
Summer ; 

with Mary's and My Most respectful Compliments 
to M" Madison, I am 

My dear Sir 

Your faithfull 

Humble Servant 

Horatio Gates. 

It was not until spring that Madison received 
congratulations from his old friend and college 
mate Freneau, but when his letter arrived it 
was no less hearty than the others in its good 
wishes : — 

Monmouth, May 20*^,— 1795.— 

My respected friend, — 

The Public Papers some time ago Announced 
your Marriage. I wish you all possible happiness 
63 



DOLLY MADISON 

with the lady whom you have chosen for your com- 
panion through life — M"".' Freneau joins me in the 
same, and desires me to present her best respects to 
your lady and yourself — and should you ever take 
an excursion to these parts of Jersey, we will en- 
deavour to give Mr? Madison and yourself — ^'if 
not a costly welcome, yet a kind." — 
I am. Sir, 

with great Esteem 
Your friend and humble Serv* 

Philip Ekeneau. 

Shortly after his marriage, Madison began 
building and rebuilding at Montpellier by the 
adding of new outbuildings and setting in order 
of old, which he continued, with the aid of an 
architect named Chisholm, through a series of 
years. He writes to Monroe that he is sending 
off a wagon to fetch nails for his carpenters, 
and as his building is nearly completed he 
asks if Monroe will allow him to secure a few 
articles which he had offered from the stock 
brought from France. 

The articles ordered by Madison consist of 
" two table-cloths for a dining room, of about 
eighteen feet ; two, three or four, as may be 
convenient, for a more limited scale ; four dozen 
napkins, which will not in the least be objec- 
tionable for having been used, and two mat- 
tresses." A biographer of Madison makes 

64 



"THE GREAT LITTLE MADISON'* 

himself very merry over this slender list, and 
comments -with playful irony : " It was not an 
extravagant outfit even though it had not been 
meant for one of those lordly Virginia houses 
of which some modern historians give us such 
charming pictures ; " but surely this writer 
would not have us believe that these articles 
were the entire dependence of the Madison 
household, even with the addition of the 
kitchen furnishings for which Madison asks 
further, adding with due humility : " We are 
so unacquainted with the culinary utensils in 
detail that it is difficult to refer to such by 
name or description as would be within our 
wants." 

Certain it is, that the house at Montpellier 
was amply provided as time went on both with 
necessaries and luxuries, and many a happy 
hour James and Dolly Madison spent in enlar- 
ging and adorning it ; but pleasant and rest- 
ful as the life at Montpellier might prove, it 
could at present be only an interlude. In a 
little more than a month the newly married 
pair were back in Philadelphia, whence Madi- 
son sends a letter to Jefferson on November 
sixth. James Madison was too important a 
man to be long spared from the national coun- 
cils, and a letter of John Adams' written at the 
capital about the end of November reports him 

5 65 



DOLLY MADISON 

as acting on one of the committees of the House 
of Representatives, of which he was a promi- 
nent member. 

Mrs. Madison, on her return to Philadel- 
phia, found the social season already begun, and 
plunged at once into the tide of entertainments. 
Her enjoyment of all the scenes of gayety 
was heightened, as she confessed, by its con- 
trast with the repression of her youth, and she 
brought to social life a freshness of delight 
which greatly enhanced the charm of her 
personality and made her everywhere welcome, 
— especially as an enlivening factor in the 
levees held by President and Mrs. Washington, 
at the sober old house on Market Street, with 
its mottled brick walls and its two lamps glim- 
mering owl-like before the door to light the 
way of strangers. It was, perhaps, the mem- 
ory of the somewhat dreary formality of these 
official functions at the President's mansion, 
which led Dolly Madison to make her own 
receptions at the White House, in after years, 
so charmingly informal and easy. It speaks 
volumes for her tact and amiability that, little 
as she had mingled in the world, she was able to 
glide into this provincial court, with its rigid 
code of etiquette and its thousand little personal 
piques and grudges, without offending against 
any social canons or incurring any enmities. 

66 



"THE GREAT LITTLE MADISON'' 

PhiladelpJiia society between 1794 and 1797 
was brilliant in every sense. The streets were 
gay with equipages, of which the most impos- 
ing was the President's white coach with scarlet 
panels, drawn by white horses, and attended 
by outriders wearing the scarlet and white 
livery of the Washington family. The houses 
were gay with dinners, routs, and balls, but 
best of all, the hosts and guests were bril- 
liant in themselves. The French Revolution 
had driven many titled foreigners of distinction 
over-seas, and all who came to the United 
States of course found their way to the capital, 
if only to see the great Washington who was 
almost as much of a hero in France as in his 
native land. In the spring of 1794 M. de Tal- 
leyrand, Bishop of Autun (Heaven save the 
mark !) came over and settled for a time in 
Philadelphia at Oeller's Tavern on Chestnut 
Street. Shortly after the Madisons' return 
the Due de la Rochefoucauld-Li ancourt also 
arrived, and began at once taking notes for 
his voluminous book on American peculiari- 
ties. Later Louis Philippe, followed by his 
brothers, the Due de Montpensier and the 
Comte de Beaujolias, appeared in Philadel- 
phia, where the Bourbon prince lodged humbly 
enough in a tiny room over a barber's shop. 
When he extended royal hospitality in this 

67 



DOLLY MADISON 

apartment, he was compelled to seat half his 
guests on the bed, but with the happy grace of 
his nation, he remarked that he had himself 
occupied less comfortable places without the 
consolation of agreeable company. The royal 
exile, it is said, offered himself to one of the 
daughters of Mr. Bingham, but the parent, 
wiser than the father of Elizabeth Paterson, 
declined the doubtful honor, replying shrewdly : 
'' Should you ever be restored to your heredi- 
tary position you will be too great a match for 
my daughter. Otherwise she is too great a 
match for you." 

Among the foreign visitors to Philadelphia 
during these closing years of the century was 
a young Spanish Ambassador, described as " a 
short full man," and bearing tlie sounding title 
of Don Carlos Martinez, Marquis D'Yrujo, 
who presented his credentials, and soon after 
married Dolly Madison's intimate friend Sally 
McKean, that merry, mischievous, altogether 
charming young woman, who looks out at us 
from Stuart's portrait with lips that can scarcely 
refrain from smiling long enough to be painted, 
with neck and arms of snowy whiteness, and a 
general air of innocent and high-bred coquetry. 

Of all the social events of the fashionable 
world at this time none were of such high im- 
portance as the Assemblies, held at Oeller's 

68 



"THE GREAT LITTLE MADISON'* 

fcavern in a fine ball-room sixty feet square, 
with a musicians' gallery at one end, and 
walls " papered after the French taste with 
Pantheon figures on the panels." The rules 
governing these gatherings were very strict, 
and intended to secure behavior corresponding 
to the dignity of the names on the list of 
managers. 

These regulations were framed and hung on 
the wall that all might read. They provided 
that, — 

1. The Managers have the entire direction. 

2. The Ladies rank in sets and draw for places 
as they enter the room. The Managers have power 
to place strangers and brides at the head of the 
Dances. 

3. The Ladies who lead call the Dances alter- 
nately. 

4. No Lady to dance out of her set, without 
leave of a Manager. 

5. No Lady to quit her place in the Dance, or 
alter the figure. 

6. No person to interrupt the view of the 
Dance. 

7. The rooms to be opened at six o'clock every 
Thursday evening during the season. The Dances 
to commence at seven and end at twelve precisely. 

8. Each set having danced a Country-Dance, a 
Cotillion may be called if at the desire of eight 
Ladies. 

69 



DOLLY MADISON 

9. No Stranger admitible without a Ticket 
signed by one of the Managers, previously ob- 
tained. 

10. No Gentleman admitible in boots, colored 
stockings, or undress. 

The preparation of toilets for these Assem- 
blies was an affair of serious importance. I find 
in a Philadelphia journal at the commencement 
of the season, under date of November twenty- 
seventh, 1794, an advertisement that " Lacave 
has the honor of informing the ladies of Phil- 
adelphia that he cuts and dresses hair in the 
most approved and late fashion. He also orna- 
ments the head-dress according to the wish of 
his employers, with the handkerchief., ribbon, 
feather, flowers, gauze, perle, etc. All in the 
newest taste. He lives at number fourteen 
Cherry Alley, between Third and Fourth 
Streets." 

All this dressing and dancing, this flirting 
and feasting amused and entertained Mrs. 
Madison far more than it did her husband, — 
a difference easily accounted for by the mere 
fact that she was under thirty while he was 
over forty. But the difference went deeper than 
this, for while the wife lived very much upon 
the surface of things and found her happiness 
in the occurrences of the moment, the husband 
saw beneath all this pleasant exterior and 

70 



**THE GREAT LITTLE MADISON" 

was growing daily more disgusted with the 
envy, hatred, and malice which underlay it. 
He felt in his soul the degradation of the 
political broils which embittered the last years 
of Washington's administration. He began to 
talk seriously of giving up public life altogether, 
and returning to the simple delights of the 
country which had proved so entrancing in 
the early days of his married life at Mont- 
pellier. In this strain he wrote to his most 
intimate friend, counsellor, and confidant, 
Thomas Jefferson, who made answer : '' Hold 
on, my dear friend, that we may not ship- 
wreck ! I do not see in the minds of those 
with whom I converse a greater affliction than 
the fear of your retirement ; but this must not 
be unless to a more splendid, a more efficient 
post. There I should rejoice to see you. I 
may say ; I shall rejoice to see you." 

Jefferson casts about in this letter for every 
argument and persuasion likely to influence his 
friend, and, at length, sharing evidently in the 
opinion of Abigail Adams, that no man ever 
prospered without the consent and co-operation 
of his wife, he adds at the end, '' Present me 
respectfully to Mrs. Madison, and pray her to 
keep you where you are, for her own satisfaction 
and for the public good." 

Already the influence of the young wife 

71 



DOLLY MADISON 

was a factor to be reckoned with, and the 
appeal to her powers of persuasion was by no 
means an idle compliment on Jefferson's part. 
From the time of her marriage her husband's 
career was her first care, and she devoted 
herself with the most unselfish affection to 
furthering his every interest. Her political 
creed was an adaptation of Decatur's motto : 
" My husband, — may he ever be right ! but 
my husband, right or wrong." 

Some influence, whether his wife's or not, 
we can only infer, did persuade Madison to 
hold his seat in Congress until the end of the 
Washington administration, and Mrs. Madison 
continued to make w^arm friends and admirers 
even among the political opponents of her 
husband. That stanch old Federalist, John 
Adams, looked upon Madison as a political 
apostate who had abandoned the truth accord- 
ing to Alexander Hamilton to follow the false 
Republican gods of Thomas Jefferson, but he 
wrote to his wife from Philadelphia : — 

''My dearest Friend. — I dined yesterday 
with Mr. Madison. Mrs. Madison is a fine woman, 
and her two sisters are equally so. One of them is 
jnarried to George Washington, one of the neph- 
ews of the President, who are sometimes at our 
house. Mr. Washington came and civilly inquired 
after your health. These ladies, whose name is 
72 



"THE GREAT LITTLE MADISON" 

Payne, are of a Quaker family, one of North 
Carolina." 

Thus it appears that Dolly Madison charmed 
John Adams, as she charmed every one else 
with whom she came in contact from the begin- 
ning to the end of her life. How did she do it ? 
Assuredly not by conscious effort, or with pre- 
pense intention. It was what she was, rather 
than what she did or said which attracted all 
who came within the circle of her personal 
magnetism. Perhaps the best explanation of 
her attraction is offered by the remark of one 
of her nieces, who said lately, " I always 
thought better of myself when I had been with 
Aunt Dolly.'' 

Despite the happiness of her married life, 
the year 1795 opened sadly for Mrs. Madison, 
whose warm heart vibrated to every chord of 
family joys and family sorrows. Under date 
of January 5th in this year Elizabeth Drinker 
records in her journal : " I heard this evening 
of the death of two of Molly Payne's sons. 
Temple and Isaac ; the latter offended a man 
in Virginia, who some time after shot him with 
a pistol." 

In January of the year 1796 the will of John 
Payne, Mrs. Madison's father, was brought up 
for probate, and letters testamentary were 
granted to the widow, Mary Payne, as sole 

73 



DOLLY MADISON 

executrix. George Walker and John Todd, 
who had witnessed the will, were now both 
dead. Dolly Madison therefore was the only sur- 
viving witness. She and her two sisters came 
into court to testify to the signature. '' This 
day," says the old record, " appeared Dolley P. 
Maddison [szc],of the State of Virginia, Gentle- 
woman, late Dolley P. Todd, who, being one of 
the People called Quakers and conscientiously 
scrupulous of taking an oath, Doth solemnly 
declare and affirm that she was present and 
saw her late father John Payne . . . sign, seal, 
publish, and declare the same as and for his 
Testament and last Will." 

The estate left to Mrs. Payne consisted chiefly 
of lands in Western Virginia and Kentucky. 
In the Madison Papers are a number of letters 
on the subject of this property, for Madison 
loyally took upon his heavily-burdened shoul- 
ders all the interests, financial and otherwise, 
of his wife and her family. 

In 1797 Washington's administration came 
to an end, and with it Dolly Madison's life in 
Philadelphia. The last public ceremony at 
which she and her husband took part was the 
inauguration of John Adams, and it was their 
privilege to witness the ineffably pathetic scene 
of Washington's farewell, when the people, 
frantic with grief, followed him to the very 

74 



"THE GREAT LITTLE MADISON" 

door of his house as though they could not let 
him go. 

One who witnessed the scene, writes of it 
thus : — 

^' Adams entered in a full suit of fine grey cloth, 
but every eye was fixed on Washington who wore 
a full suit of black velvet, his hair powdered and 
in a bag, diamond knee-buckles and a light sword 
with grey scabbard. Behind him was Jefferson, 
gaunt, ungainly, square-shouldered with foxy hair, 
dressed in blue coat, small-clothes, vest of crimson; 
near by was pale, reflective Madison and burly, 
bustling Knox. After the inaugural, Adams left 
the room followed by Jefferson; still people stood 
motionless till AVashington descended from the 
platform and left the hall to go down the street to 
the Indian Queen, to pay his respects to the new 
President. 

*^The immense crowd followed him as one 
man, but in total silence. After he had gone in, 
a smothered sound went up from the multitude like 
thunder, for he was passing away from them to be 
seen no more. The door opened, and he stood on 
the threshold looking at the people. No man ever 
saw him so deeply moved. The tears rolled down 
over his cheeks ; then he bowed slow and low, and 
the door closed." 

The Madisons now took their leave of Phil- 
adelphia and returned for a season to the 

75 



DOLLY MADISON 

Virginia mountain home, where, during the 
Adams administration, Mrs. Madison led a 
quiet and domestic life, so hidden from the 
world that the record of it is fragmentary and 
defies research. Here and there, however, I 
find allusions to her in the letters written to her 
husband; Jefferson rarely closes his gravest 
communications without some salutations to 
her. Now, it is, " Present me affectionately to 
Mrs. Madison, and convey to her my entreaties 
to interpose her good offices and persuasions 
with you to bring her here and before we un- 
cover our house, which will yet be some weeks." 
Again he bids Madison tell his wife " her 
friend, Madame d'Yrujo, is as well as one can 
be near so formidable a crisis." It is not too 
much to say of this young wife that there was 
not a single one of her husband's friends to 
whom she did not show herself as friendly as 
he, and that she was so closely associated in the 
minds of all with that husband, that they spoke 
of them always together. 

Tradition attributes Jefferson's affection for 
Dolly Madison to a certain tenderness which he 
was said to have cherished in his early days 
for her mother, the beautiful Mary Coles, 
rumor even making him a suitor for her hand. 
But " certain tendernesses " were so common 
among the Virginia Cavaliers, and especially 

76 



I 



''THE GREAT LITTLE MADISON'* 

with the susceptible young Tom Jefferson, that 
had he taken all the children of his old flames 
into special regard, his sentiment must have 
embraced a goodly share of his native State. I 
incline, therefore, to the opinion that the warm 
place which young Mrs. Madison held in his 
esteem was primarily an extension of the regard 
which he had so long felt for her husband, but 
that this very soon gave place to a much more 
personal affection, in which his whole family 
shared, and which was simply and solely the 
result of Dolly Madison's gifts and graces. 

In 1799 the whole country was saddened by 
the death of Washington. Mrs. Madison, like 
the rest of the world, wore the same mourning 
as for the death of a relative, and she and her 
husband went to Mount Yernon to express to 
the widowed Martha Washington the sympathy 
and condolence of near friends. In the same 
year they had been called to mourn for the loss 
of their kinsman Patrick Henry, who died at 
his estate, in Virginia, on the sixth of June. 
Save for such sorrows as these, the years of re- 
tirement passed peacefully with the Madisons. 

In 1800 Mrs. Madison's sister, Mary Payne, 
was married to John G. Jackson, a member of 
Congress from Virginia. Otherwise her family 
circle knew few changes. Little Payne Todd 
was passing a happy childhood among the fields 

7T 



DOLLY MADISON 

of Montpellier. Mrs. Madison was enjoying the 
quiet Virginia life as much as she had enjoyed 
the gay days in Philadelphia, and Madison 
himself was as busy as ever, for he had with- 
drawn from the Congress of the United States 
only to serve his country after another fashion, 
in the halls of the Virginia Assembly. He and 
his wife never returned to take up their resi- 
dence in Philadelphia, for, before Madison was 
called again to take part in national affairs, the 
seat of government had once more been changed 
— this time permanently — to the site on the 
northern bank of the Potomac agreed upon, 
after many arguments and discussions, so hot 
and bitter that they threatened the life of the 
nation : the new capital, christened Washing- 
ton in honor of the nation's chief. 



78 



THE NEW CAPITAL 

Washington, unlike Topsy, was made, in- 
stead of growing. Congress said : '' Let there 
be a city ! '* but in answer to its command 
there arose no real city, but only a straggling 
line of fine buildings in the heart of a wilder- 
ness. The poet Tom Moore, who came over to 
America in the first years of the existence of 
the new capital, wrote ironically of 

" This famed metropolis where fancy sees 
Squares in morasses, obelisks in trees, 
Which travelling fools and gazetteers adorn 
With shrines unbuilt and heroes yet unborn." 

Another traveller reported that in a space as 
large as the entire town of New York, there 
was nothing to be seen save brick-kilns and 
laborers' huts. Gouverneur Morris wrote jest- 
ingly to the Princess de Tours et Taxis that 
nothing was wanted except houses, cellars, 
well-informed men, amiable women, and a few 
other trifles, to make the capital perfect, and 

79 



DOLLY MADLSON 

that it was indeed an ideal city — for future 
residence. 

At the time when Dolly Madison came to 
Washington, and by invitation of President 
Jefferson assisted in his official hospitalities, 
the White House stood on the spot where it 
stands to-day, but uninclosed, on a stretch of 
waste and barren ground, separated from the 
Capitol by a dreary and almost impassable 
marsh, while the presidential mansion, unfin- 
ished as it was, and standing among the rough 
masses of stone and rubbish, looked more like 
a ruin than a rising dwelling. Of its interior 
we have a very graphic description in a letter 
written by Abigail Adams, whose ill fortune it 
was to take the brunt of the pioneering at the 
capital, and to have only time enough to set 
the White House in order for her successors. 
The conditions under which she began her 
life in Washington would surely have daunted 
any spirit less indomitable than hers. 

On the twenty-first of November, 1800, she 
writes to her daughter Mrs. Smith, from the 
White House : — 

^'My dear Child. — I arrived here on Sunday 
last, and without meeting with any accident worth 
noticing, except losing ourselves when we left Bal- 
timore, and going eight or nine miles on the Fred- 
erick road, by which means we were obliged to go 
80 



THE NEW CAPITAL 

the other eight through woods where we wandered 
two hours without finding a guide, or the path. For- 
tunately a straggling black came up with us, and 
we engaged him as a guide, to extricate us out of 
our difficulty; but woods are all you see, from 
Baltimore until you reach the City which is only 
so in name. Here and there is a small cot without 
a glass window, interspersed amongst the forests 
through which you travel miles without seeing any 
human being. 

^*In the city there are buildings enough, if they 
were compact and finished, to accommodate Congress 
and those attached to it; but as they are, and scat- 
tered as they are, I see no great comfort for them. 
The river, which runs up to Alexandria, is in full 
view of my window, and I see the vessels as they 
pass and repass. The house is on a grand and 
superb scale, requiring about thirty servants to 
attend and keep the apartments in proper order, 
and perform the ordinary business of the house and 
stables; an establishment very well proportioned to 
the President's salary. The lighting of the apart- 
ments from the kitchen to parlors and chambers is 
a tax indeed, and the fires we are obliged to keep to 
secure us from daily agues is another very cheer- 
ful comfort. To assist us in this great castle, and 
render less attendance necessary, bells are wholly 
wanting, not one single one being hung through 
the whole house, and promises are all you can ob- 
tain. This is so great an inconvenience tljat T 
know not what to do, or how to do. 
6 81 



DOLLY MADISON 

'^The ladies from Georgetown and in this city- 
have many of them visited me. Yesterday I re- 
turned fifteen visits, but such a place as George- 
town appears! Why, our Milton is beautiful, — 
but no comparisons ! if they will put me up some 
bells, and let me have wood enough to keep fires, I 
design to be pleased. I could content myself 
almost anywhere three months; but surrounded 
with forests, can you believe that wood is not to be 
had, because people cannot be found to cut and 
cart it! Briesler entered into a contract with a 
man to supply him with wood; a small part, a few 
cords only, has he been able to get. Most of that 
was expended to dry the walls of the house before 
we came in, and yesterday the man told him it was 
impossible for him to procure it to be cut and 
carted. He has had recourse to coals, but we can- 
not get grates made and set. We have indeed 
come into a new country. 

** You must keep all this to yourself, and, when 
asked how I like it, say that I write you the situa- 
tion is beautiful, which is true. The house is 
made habitable; but there is not a single apartment 
finished, and all withinside, except the plastering, 
has been done since Briesler came. We have not 
the least fence, yard, or other convenience, without; 
and the great unfinished audience-room I make a 
drying room of, to hang up the clothes in. The 
principal stairs are not up, and will not be this 
winter. Six chambers are made comfortable. Two 
are occupied by the President and Mr. Shaw ; two 

82 



THE NEW CAPITAL 

lower rooms, one for a common parlor and one 
for a levee-room. Up-stairs there is the oval room, 
which is designed for the drawing-room, and has 
the crimson furniture in it. It is a very handsome 
room now; but when completed, it will be beauti- 
ful. If the twelve years in which this place has 
been considered as the future seat of Government 
had been improved, as they would have been in 
New England, very many of the present inconven- 
iences would have been removed. It is a beauti- 
ful spot, capable of every improvement, and the 
more I view it, the more I am delighted with it.'' 

Four months after this letter was written, 
Abigail Adams had turned her back upon 
the difficulties and the delights of White- 
House-keeping, and Dolly Madison was presid- 
ing over receptions and dinner-parties within 
the walls of the mansion. 

The spring of 1801 saw Thomas Jefferson 
installed as President of the United States. 
After a bitter campaign of Federalists against 
Republicans, and a no less bitter struggle 
in the House when the votes for Jefferson and 
Burr were pronounced a tie, the former was at 
last declared the successful candidate, with the 
latter as Vice-President, and was duly inaugur- 
ated on the fourth of March. Mr. and Mrs. 
Madison could not be present to witness this 
crowning moment in their dear friend's life, 

83 



DOLLY MADISON 

much as they must have longed to do so, for a 
sad family event detained them in Virginia, — 
Madison's father having died at the home= 
stead at Montpellier, on the twenty-seventh of 
February, in the seventy-eighth year of his 
age. As soon, however, as the home duties 
could be discharged, Madison hastened to 
Washington to enter upon the office of Sec- 
retary of State to which Jefferson had early 
appointed him, and Mrs. Madison began her 
public life as the wife of a cabinet official. 

The changes introduced by the new admin- 
istration were sweeping, socially as well as 
politically. Jeffersonian simplicity was the 
watchword of the day. The new President 
had discarded the state and ceremony which 
marked the public functions of the Washington 
administration. A tradition, discredited by 
Henry Adams, but dear to the popular heart, 
related how, in place of driving to the Capitol 
in a coach drawn by six horses and attended by 
outriders, he had mounted liis horse and ridden 
as any private individual might have done to 
the spot where he was to take the oath of 
office. The story is at least in keeping with 
the simplicity at which he aimed. His dress 
was as unpretending as his equipage, and he 
asked no higher title than that of citizen. 

His admirers threw up their hats, and re- 

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THE NEW CAPITAL 

joiced that the reign of " Anglomany " was 
ended and that there was to be a truly republi- 
can rule. His enemies, on the other hand, pre- 
dicted the surrender of the country to French 
influence. Yoltaire and Thomas Paine were 
to be the prophets, and Bonaparte the lawgiver 
of the new administration. So they said, and 
there was some ground for the prediction, 
though not perhaps for the exaggerated out- 
cries of the public press. 

Long after the United States had shaken off 
the political yoke of Great Britain, English 
customs and traditions still swayed the newly 
emancipated nation. Washington, with all his 
greatness, was a transplanted English squire ; 
Adams and his administration reflected Puritan 
England, distilled through Massachusetts ; but 
Jefferson came into office swayed professedly 
by different ideas and ideals. He had wit- 
nessed the early enthusiasm of the French 
Revolution, and rejoiced in its success. He 
recalled the mutual good offices exchanged 
between France and America, and contrasted 
them with the hostile attitude of England. 
Both were still fresh in the minds of men. 

France had helped us in the struggle with 
Great Britain as no other nation could have 
done. We sent her Franklin. She lent us 
Lafayette. We pointed out to- her the path of 

85 



DOLLY MADISON 

liberty, and Franklin's " (^a ira ! " furnished 
the chorus to the song of the French Revolu- 
tionists. There was thus much to stir a senti- 
ment of sympathy with France ; but gratitude 
is a feebler emotion than resentment, and the 
true secret of the public sentiment which had 
put forward Thomas Jefferson lay in the old, 
unsubduable rancor against England. 

A people is not changed in a day however, 
and there were many to bewail the under- 
mining of the old faith, and the uprooting 
of the good old social traditions. In his Re- 
miniscences of a Life Time, Goodrich gives 
himself up to a sad head-shaking over the 
degeneracy in manners public and private. 
This moralist, with the alliterative pen-name 
of Peter Farley, writes : " Before the Jeffer- 
sonian era, travellers who met on the high- 
way saluted each other with formal and 
dignified courtesy, and children stopped as 
they passed a grown person and made the bow 
they had been practised in at school for such 
occasions. But as democracy spread, these 
formal salutations first subsided into a vulgar 
nod, half ashamed and half impudent, and then 
like the pendulum of a dying clock totally 
ceased." 

Among the observers of the rampant democ- 
racy of the new republican court, none was more 

86 



THE NEW CAPITAL 

bitterly resentful than Anthony Merry, the Brit- 
ish Minister. He wrote home in deep disgust 
of his reception on the occasion when he went 
by appointment to meet the President of the 
United States. He complained that he was 
kept waiting in an ante-room, and finally 
presented, in a most undignified manner, 
squeezed against the wall of a passage-way, 
in the middle of which he and Madison un- 
expectedly encountered the President. Merry 
himself was in the most correct of ambas- 
sadorial costume, and, not unnaturally, was 
aghast to see Jefferson, his tall, shambling 
form clad in garments arranged with studied 
negligence, his shoes somewhat down at the 
heel and fastened with a shoe-string in place of 
bow or buckle, and his whole appearance indic- 
ative of utter indifference to the dignity of a 
British Minister's visit. " I could not doubt," 
writes the irate Merry, " that the whole scene 
was prepared and intended as an insult, not to 
me personally, perhaps, but to the Sovereign I 
represented." 

Bad as this beginning was, worse remained to 
be told. Diplomacy, like hell, " knows no fury 
like a woman scorned," and a dinner-table coTir 
tretemps threatened to grow into an international 
episode. Mr. and Mrs. Merry were invited to 
the White House to dine with other foreign min- 

87 



DOLLY MADISON 

isters and members of the cabinet, with their 
respectire wives. Mrs. Merry, a dame described 
by Aaron Burr as " tall, fair, and fat, — mais 
pas trop^^ — and who, even more than her 
husband, had personal dignity at heart, looked 
forward, as a matter of course, to enjoying the 
precedence due to the most distinguished lady 
present ; and great was her wrath when, at the 
announcement of dinner, Jefferson arose and 
offered his arm to Mrs. Madison, who, observ- 
ing the other lady's discomfiture, strove in vain 
to motion him to take Mrs. Merry. He declined 
to accept the suggestion, and led the way to the 
dining-room with the wife of the Secretary of 
State, while Mrs. Merry fumed in the procession 
behind. 

A sweet opportunity of revenge came to the 
Merry s a little later. Jefferson, who was by 
nature a peacemaker, thinking, perhaps, that 
the lesson of democracy had been sufficiently 
taught, caused Mr. Merry to be asked informally 
whether he would accept an invitation to a fam- 
ily dinner at the White House, and understand- 
ing that the reply was an affirmative the Presi- 
dent wrote with his own hand a personal invita- 
tion ; to which this absurd person responded by 
a letter to the Secretary of State, asking whether 
the President of the United States had asked him 
to dinner as a private gentleman or as British 

88 



I 



THE NEW CAPITAL 

Plenipotentiary ; for, if as a private gentleman, 
he must obtain his Sovereign's permission, 
while, if the invitation was to be accepted in 
his official character, he must have an assurance 
that he would be treated with the respect due to 
it. Madison's rejoinder was brief and to the 
point, and left little doubt in Merry's mind that 
the President of the United States had decided 
to conduct his household, social and political, 
without advice from the British Minister. 

One would think that the lesson by this time 
must have been thoroughly learned ; but when 
Jefferson's eldest daughter, Martha, who had 
married Thomas Mann Randolph, came to pay 
her father a visit, Mrs. Merry again returned 
to the charge, writing to inquire whether Mrs. 
Randolph came to Washington as the Presi- 
dent's daughter or as the wife of a Virginia gen- 
tleman, as, in the former case, she would make 
the first call, but in the latter case should expect 
to receive it. Mrs. Randolph replied, under her 
father's instructions, that she was in Washing- 
ton as the wife of a Virginia gentleman, and as 
such should expect the first call from the wife 
of the British Minister, as the canons of official 
etiquette drawn up by Jefferson declared that 
all strangers in the city should be visited by all 
residents of Washington. 

These rebuffs were doubtless rankling in the 

89 



DOLLY MADISON 

soul of Merry when later on he listened, with 
favor, to the treason which Burr whispered 
in his ear at Philadelphia ; but, meanwhile, he 
saw fit to smother his indignation, and beyond 
a passing jest between Mrs. Randolph and Mrs. 
Madison, his disaffection met with little atten- 
tion. Nor did he meet with more attention from 
his own government, for not only did it make 
no remonstrance, but Merry, greatly to his 
amazement, was at length informed that his 
re(^uest for a recall was granted, and that he 
would be relieved as Minister to the United 
States by David Montague Erskine. As Merry 
had never made any such request, he must 
have felt that the treatment from his own gov- 
ernment was rather more insulting than that 
of which he so bitterly complained at the hands 
of the Republican President. 

It would be hard to overestimate the social 
influence of Mrs. Madison in these early days 
of Jefferson's administration. As both the 
President's daughters were married and living 
at a distance, it was natural that much of the 
responsibility of official entertaining should 
fall on the wife of his most intimate friend, 
and chief cabinet officer. Many little notes 
have been preserved in which Thomas Jeffer- 
son begs Mrs. Madison and Miss Payne to dine 
with liim, or presents his affectionate saluta- 

90 



THE NEW CAPITAL 

tions, and asks their assistance in taking care 
of " female friends expected." 

Next to the White House the residence of 
the Secretary of State was the resort of the 
largest number of visitors. In Mr. Madison's 
drawing-room, ministers, senators, and foreign 
diplomats mingled with freedom and ease. 
Here all party differences were laid aside, all 
strangeness ceased, and under Mrs. Madison's 
genial leadership Washington official society 
(made up of the most incongruous and inhar- 
monious elements) became, as Jefferson him- 
self testified, like one family. 

The social importance thus, as it were, thrust 
upon Mrs. Madison left her as unspoiled as it 
found her. She preserved her old simple man- 
ners and habits with only such changes as the 
new environment required. Her table contin- 
ued to be set and served in the old bounti- 
ful Virginia fashion. It was reported to her 
that the size and number of dishes at her table 
had been ridiculed by the wife of a foreign 
minister (it is not difficult to guess which), 
who had remarked that her dinner was more 
like a harvest-home supper, than the entertain- 
ment of a Secretary of State. Mrs. Madison 
replied to the criticism, with her usual good 
nature and good sense, — that the profusion 
of her table was the result of the prosperity of 

91 



DOLLY MADISON 

her country, and she must therefore continue 
to prefer Virginia liberality to European ele- 
gance. 

A member of Congress who shared the hos- 
pitalities of this bountiful table w^rites most 
appreciatively of its merits. " An excellent 
dinner," he records, after one of the feasts, 
and then proceeds to enumerate the dishes. 
" The round of beef of which the soup is 
made," he says, " is called ' bouilli.' It had in 
the dish spices, and something of the sweet 
herb and earlie kind, and a rich gravy. It is 
very much boiled and is still very good. We 
had a dish with what appeared to be cabbage, 
much boiled, then cut in long strings and 
somewhat mashed ; in the middle a large ham, 
with the cabbage around. It looked like our 
country dishes of bacon and cabbage, with 
the cabbage mashed up after being boiled till 
sodden and turned dark. The dessert good: 
much as usual, except two dishes which ap- 
peared like apple-pie in the form of the half of 
a mush-melon, the flat side down, top creased 
deep, and the color a dark brown." 

I hold in my hand a sheet of yellow paper, 
thrice folded, and addressed on the back to 
Mr. and Mrs. Dickins, wherein " Mr. and Mrs. 
Madison request the favor of Mr. and Mrs. 
Dickins to dine with them on Tuesday at four 

92 



THE NEW CAPITAL 

o'clock," — and in a lower printed line, " An 
answer is requested." 

These state dinners, after whatever fashion 
conducted, were formidable affairs, and a seri- 
ous tax on both the strength and the purse of 
public men. The White House wagon was got 
out early in the morning to go to Georgetown to 
market, and the day's provisions often cost as 
much as fifty dollars. Even the President's sal- 
ary was scarcely adequate to meet the expense 
of official entertaining, as Jefferson soon found, 
to the delight of his enemies. " He always 
thought," said the " New England Palladium," 
" twenty-five thousand dollars a great salary 
when Mr. Adams had it. Now he will un- 
doubtedly think twelve thousand five hundred 
enough. Monticello is not far away ; he can 
easily send home his clothes to be washed and 
mended ; his servants he owns, and his vegeta* 
bles he can bring from his estate." 

State dinner-parties, heavily as they taxed 
time and money, were powerful political factors, 
however, and all the more so under the tactful 
sway of " Queen Dolly." The offer of her 
snuff-box was a balm to wounded feelings, and 
her hearty laugh raised a breeze which blew 
away many a diplomatic awkwardness. It was 
customary to dine in the middle of the after- 
noon, and the company frequently sat at table 

93 



DOLLY MADISON 

throughout the whole evening, talking and 
drinking toasts. The old drinking habit was 
declining, and drunkenness no longer so fashion- 
able as it had been ; but Madison's port and 
madeira were popular, and though he himself 
was most temperate, and, as his body servant 
says, would scarcely more than raise his glass 
to his lips, his guests were for the greater part 
men who shared Willis's aversion to water- 
drinking, though lacking perhaps the subtle 
analysis of their dislike which the dapper 
dilettante gave when he declared, with a mock 
shudder, that water had tasted of sinners ever 
since the Flood. 

Mrs. Madison was spared many of the ques- 
tions of dinner etiquette which vex the soul of 
the English hostess, by a clause in the new 
republican code of manners, which declared 
that " at dinners, public and private, perfect 
equality exists between the guests, and to give 
force to the principle of equality or pele mele, 
and to prevent the growth of precedence out of 
courtesy, the members of the Executive at their 
own houses will adhere to the ancient usage 
of their ancestors, — gentlemen en masse giv- 
ing place to the ladies en masse.''' 

The autumn of the year after her coming to 
Washington brought Mrs. Madison a great 
pleasure in the visit of her dear friends, Mrs 

94 



THE NEW CAPITAL 

Randolph and Mrs. Eppes, to their father in the 
White House. Martha Jefferson, was almost 
exactly of the same age as Mrs. Madison, and 
they were bound together by the closest ties, 
while for Mrs. Eppes, the beautiful little Polly, 
who years ago had found Monticello " hien 
different de Paris,^^ Dolly Madison shared the 
admiration of the rest of the world. 

To Mrs. Madison it fell to make the prep- 
aration of toilet, which were necessary to dames 
living several days' journey from a fashion 
model or a milliner, in an age when dress 
was even more important than now, and where, 
to be duly hideous in the mode, a woman 
must be attired in wide-spreading hoops, with 
high-heeled shoes and hair tortured into pyra- 
mids and crisped into curls, or cut off to be 
replaced by the more conveniently arranged wig. 

This fashionable wig was greatly coveted by 
all dames and damsels who aspired to belle- 
ship. Charming Eliza Bowne writes home-. 
" Now, mamma, what do you think I am going 
to ask for ? A Wig ! " She complains that 
she cannot dress her hair " stylish," and can- 
not endure a second time the mortification of 
being the only young woman wearing her own 
hair at the assembly. Then the artful pleader 
argues that in a year the price could be saved 
in pins and paper, and finally urges an imme- 

95 



DOLLY MADISON 

diate remittance of the necessary five dollars 

to procure the yearned-for article before the 

next assembly. The wig question, it would 

seem, was agitating the whole country, or at 

least the petticoated half of the nation, for in 

view of the coming visit to Washington, Martha 

Jefferson Randolph writes to her father from 

Virginia : 

Oct. 29, 1802. 

Dear Papa, — We received your letter, and 
are prepared with all speed to obey its summons. 
By next Friday I hope we shall be able to fix a 
day; and probably the shortest time in which the 
horses can be sent after receiving our letter will 
determine it, though as yet it is not certain that 
we can get off so soon. 

Will you be so good as to send orders to the 
milliner, — Madame Peck, I believe her name is, — 
through Mrs. Madison, who very obligingly offered 
to execute any little commission for us in Phila- 
delphia, for two wigs of the color of the hair en- 
closed, and of the most fashionable shapes, that 
they may be in Washington when we arrive ? 
They are universally worn, and will relieve us as to 
the necessity of dressing our own hair, a business 
in which neither of us are adepts. 

I believe Madame Peck is in the habit of doing 

these things, and they can be procured in a short 

time from Philadelphia, where she corresponds, 

much handsomer than elsewhere. 

Adieu, dearest Father. 
S6 



THE NEW CAPITAL 

This kind of commission was specially pleas- 
ing to Mrs. Madison whose love of shopping- 
was only second to her love for her friends. 
The winter of 1802-3 was one of the happiest 
and gayest of her life. Her young sister Anna 
who lived with her, brought to the house much 
company, which was always specially congenial 
to Mrs. Madison, and she found much unselfish 
delight, too, in the social success of the Presi- 
dent's daughters. In after years, she loved to 
tell of the deep impression made on Washing- 
ton society by the brilliancy of the older sister 
and the radiant beauty of the younger. Their 
stay in the capital was short, however, for 
Mrs. Randolph had left a large family of small 
children at home in Virginia, and in January 
they bade farewell to Washington, one of them 
never to see it again. In little more than a 
year, Mrs. Eppes, always delicate, faded out of 
life and died in her sister's arms, leaving two 
little children to that sister's care. 



97 



VI 

WIFE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE 

While Madison was Secretary of State, 
Gilbert Stuart painted for him a number of 
family portraits. The likeness of the Secretary 
is, I suspect, a little flattered, and lends a light 
to the eye and a ruddy tone to the skin which 
are absent from all other portraits. The picture 
of Mrs. Madison is less satisfactory, and though 
she herself was quite enthusiastic over its 
merits, it certainly does not do justice to the 
alertness and vivacity of the original. Far 
better is the miniature done by Lieber at tlie 
same time with a companion picture of Madison, 
— both full of charm. 

Stuart painted also a portrait of Anna Payne, 
and that lively young lady was one of his 
especial favorites. One day while sitting to 
him she complained that it was really too bad 
that he had never made any portrait of himself, 
whereupon, with a few swift and skilful touches, 
the painter introduced a burlesque likeness of 
his own features as part of the drapery of 
Mistress Anna's portrait. 

98 



WIFE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE 

It was a great pleasure to Mrs. Madison to 
have this young sister with her, and it was with 
deep regret that she parted with her, at her 
marriage to Mr. Richard D. Cutts, a dark- 
haired, broad-browed, handsome young man of 
good family, and of such marked ability that 
he was chosen for many years as Representa- 
tive to Congress from Maine. He was regarded 
with favor by many bright eyes in Washington, 
and was quite a squire of dames at home and 
abroad. " Richard Cutts went shopping with 
me yesterday morn," writes Eliza Bowne, and 
adds, '' Engaged to go to the play next week 
with him." 

Mr. and Mrs. Madison appear to have been 
entirely satisfied with the character and posi- 
tion of Mr. Cutts, but to Mrs. Madison it was 
a trial to give up even partially the sister who 
had been like a daughter to her, and the District 
of Maine where Anna must look forward to 
making her future home was further from 
Virginia than it is to-day from Alaska. 

Nevertheless to a lover of gayety there was 
much to cheer in the preparations for the 
marriage which was celebrated with great 
merry-making in April, 1804. The bride and 
groom departed afterward for Maine, and 
Mrs. Madison followed them along their wed- 
ding journey with loving messages and a 

99 



DOLLY MADISON 

full account of all that was going on in 
Washington. 

These letters are a curious reflection of Mrs. 
Madison's mind which was wont to see life 
somewhat out of focus. Small things in them 
are writ large and large things small. Much 
space is occupied with the Baron von Hum- 
boldt's visit, with the Fourth of July oration 
delivered by Mr. Van Ness, with tea-drinking 
with the Fingays and Mrs, Forrest ; a few lines 
coupled with moral reflections are devoted to 
the death of young Mrs. Eppes which occurred 
just at this time, and exactly one sentence 
is given to an event wliich was shaking the 
country with wild excitement. On the sixteenth 
of July, 1804, she writes that they are about 
setting out for Montpellier. At the close of the 
letter, quite by the way as it were, she adds, 
" You have no doubt heard of the terrible duel, 
and death of poor Hamilton." Not a word 
further touching that awful July morning 
when Alexander Hamilton was shot through 
the body by Aaron Burr under the rocky heights 
of Weehawken. The news had flown like 
wildfire all over the country, — everywhere 
shops were closed, flags at half mast, church- 
bells tolling, and half the nation wearing badges 
of mourning for the great dead, and Mrs. Madi- 
son has but a passing word and regret for it all. 

100 



WIFE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE 

The silence of Mrs, Madison on this, as on 
all the leading questions and burning issues of 
the day, may be interpreted as part of that cau- 
tion and good judgment which warned her not 
to involve her husband by the expression of an 
opinion sure to be publicly understood as a re- 
flection of his. There was a grain of truth in 
the remark of a diplomatist, that he preferred 
to marry a fool rather than a clever woman, 
as the former could only compromise herself, 
whereas the latter might compromise both her- 
self and her husband. Dolly Madison was fur- 
ther removed from folly than from cleverness, 
but there is no doubt that a great element of her 
success lay in the negative quality of making 
no false moves. She was brilliant in the things 
she did not say and do. 

In the matter of the Burr-Hamilton duel, it 
was probable that, under all her genuine regret 
and horror of the tragedy, there was a certain 
relief of mind at seeing a formidable enemy 
of her husband and of her husband's nearest 
friend thus suddenly swept from the field. 
The word " enemy " is, perhaps, too strong to 
use in this case, especially of one who had 
been a coadjutor in the great work of the " Fed- 
eralist ; " yet it was only a few years before 
that Hamilton had written, " I am convinced 
that Madison, co-operating with Jefferson, is at 

101 



DOLLY MADISON 

the head of a faction decidedly hostile to me 
and my administration, and actuated by views, 
in my judgment, subversive of the principles of 
good government, and dangerous to the union, 
peace, and happiness of the country." A relief 
it certainly was to Jefferson and Madison to be 
rid of this worrying critic ; but they never 
desired to be rid of him in such a way ; nor 
could they fail to feel horror and indignation 
at '' the deep damnation of his taking off." Yet 
they failed signally to show their indignation 
by their treatment of Hamilton's murderer. 

When Burr fled from the justice which was 
likely to be meted out to him in New York, he 
skulked about for some time in Philadelphia, 
plotting treason with Anthony Merry, who, after 
the wont of foreign ministers, had escaped from 
the heat of Washington after the adjournment of 
Congress. Burr was ah-eady brooding over his 
scheme to break up the Union, and Merry, em- 
bittered by his personal pique, was ready to fall 
in with his plans, and lend him what help he 
could in seeking the aid of his government. 
On the sixth of August, Merry wrote to Lord 
Harrowby : " I have just received an offer from 
Mr. Burr, the actual Vice-President of the 
United States (which position he is about to 
resign), to lend his assistance to His Majesty's 
government in any manner in which they may 

102 



WIFE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE 

think fit to employ him ; particularly in endeav- 
oring to effect a separation of the western part 
of the United States from that which lies he- 
tiveen the Atlantic and the mountains in its 
whole extentJ^ 

Blacker treason no man ever plotted. Yet, 
when this murderer and traitor returned to 
Washington he had the effrontery to demand 
the social recognition due to the office which he 
had thus shamefully prostituted, and Jefferson 
and Madison (ignorant, of course, of his in- 
tended treason to the nation, but knowing full 
well his personal character) were weak enough 
to yield it to him. Burr's biographer writes : 
" The President and Vice-President were on 
about the same terms as ever. Colonel Burr 
dined at the White House twice a month. Be- 
tween himself and Mr. Madison there was an 
appearance of friendliness and a growing reality 
of reserve. Theodosia and the beautiful Mrs. 
Madison seem to have been on terms of con- 
siderable intimacy." This intimacy was, no 
doubt, reckoned upon by Burr as a factor of 
some political importance ; but whatever influ- 
ence Mrs. Madison had over her husband was 
purely personal ; she neither mingled nor wished 
to mingle directly in politics. She seems to 
have accepted quite literally the poet's instruc- 
tions to her sex : " Your best, your noblest 

103 



DOLLY MADISON 

mission is to please ; " and within the limits 
of her ambition no one was more successful. 

Social success, such as hers, is not won with- 
out sacrifices. The four seasons spent in the 
arduous and fatiguing duties and pleasures of 
life at the capital had begun to tell upon her 
health. The dampness of the malarial marshes 
about Washington and tlie recently overturned 
earth were probably responsible for the serious 
illness which overtook her in the summer of 
1804, fortunately not until she was safely 
ensconced in her dry and healthful mountain 
home. Here the inflammatory rheumatism 
which troubled her throughout her life developed 
itself, and she declared that never before had 
she known what it was to suffer such pain. Her 
husband's mother, already an old lady, proved 
herself an efficient and untiring nurse, but the 
invalid's nerves were tried by the never-ceasing 
round of visitors who were accustomed to look 
upon Montpellier as an agreeable stopping- 
place, and to consider an invitation as an un- 
necessary formality. On the day when she was 
suffering most, fifteen or twenty of the family 
connections came to dinner ; but the invalid 
was too ill to leave her bed, and was spared the 
task of social entertaining which was beginning 
to prove a serious burden, as is evident from 
the stray half-unconscious confessions which 

104 



WIFE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE 

now appear from time to time in the confidences 
of her domestic letters. 

It was a great relief to Mrs. Madison and to 
her husband occasionally to run away from all 
these domestic cares and be themselves the 
visitors. Jefferson's house at Monticello was 
situated near Charlottesville, about thirty miles 
to the southwest of Montpellier, and the Madi- 
sons' horses easily traversed the distance in a 
single day. The doors of Monticello, always 
open to guests, were thrown wider than ever at 
the approach of the Madisons, who were prime 
favorites with every one in the household, and 
such frequent guests that a special chamber 
was set apart and known as the Madison room. 

Mr. and Mrs. Madison were constantly receiv- 
ing such notes as the following : — 



Dear Sir 



Monticello. 



We shall be happy to see Mrs. Madison and your- 
self to-morrow, and shall wait dinner for you till 
half past four, believing you will easily reach this 
before that hour. My Ford has been a little in- 
jured by the freshet, but is perfectly safe. It has a 
hollow of about nine inches deep and six feet wide, 
washed in one place exactly in the middle of the 
river, but even in that it will not be to the belly of 
the horse. I salute you with great affection and 
respect. q^h^ Jeffersox. 

106 



DOLLY MADISON 

Monticello would have been an interesting 
spot to visit even without the inspiring presence 
of its master, though, indeed, it seemed so much 
a part of him, that it was difficult to separate 
them. Here all Jefferson's inventive fancy 
was turned loose, and the whole house was full 
of his strange devices. The weather-vane 
ingeniously contrived to mark the direction of 
the wind on a dial-plate ; the clock hung above 
the doorway with its two faces, one turned 
inward toward the hall, the other out toward 
the portico; the cannon-ball weights which 
moved the clock and rolled over a plate mark- 
ing the days of the week, — these were only a 
few of Jefferson's inventions. The most curi- 
ous arrangement of all was the planning of his 
bedroom, which was divided from that of his 
wife by a partition through which an archway 
was cut, and under this arch stood the bed, half 
in each apartment. 

Many years before Mrs. Madison visited 
Monticello Mrs. Jefferson had died, and Jeffer- 
son would have been left lonely indeed but for 
the love of his children and later of his grand- 
children, and the companionship of old and true 
friends whom he loved to gather about him. 
The Madisons often extended their visits over 
a period of weeks, and they were treated entirely 
as members of the family. It was Mrs. Madi- 
106 



WIFE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE 

son's delight to sit down with the elder Ran- 
dolph girls at their tasks of mending or 
embroidery, and to beguile the sorrows of the 
babies with fairy stories and kisses. 

One of the family traditions tells of a scene 
at breakfast when little Ben, finding his skill 
unequal to the dissection of his muffin, called 
upon Mrs. Madison who sat next him for aid. 
She had begun to cut the muffin when Master 
Ben's voice said earnestly, " No, no ; not that 
way." " How then ? " asked the visitor, amused 
at his seriousness. " Why," said the child, 
" you must tear him open, and put butter inside, 
and stick holes in his back, and then pat him 
and squeeze him till the juice runs out." 

Mrs. Madison laughed heartily and complied. 
It was characteristic of her to be as sincerely 
bent upon pleasing this baby boy as though he 
had been a foreign minister or a Supreme Court 
judge. 

After her recovery, Mrs. Madison returned 
to Washington for the winter of 1804-5. 
She came no longer a novice, but a woman of 
the world and an acknowledged leader of soci- 
ety, sure of herself and her position, yet with 
no undue assumption or exaggerated sense 
of importance. Her genial nature expanded 
in the sunshine of prosperity, and at this time 
everything favored her. The administration 
107 



DOLLY MADISON 

of Jefferson and his cabinet was no longer an 
experiment, but a pronounced success. The 
Louisiana purchase had enormously increased 
the prestige and political importance of the 
United States, and consequently the dignity 
of its chief officers in the eyes of the world. 
The people had spoken their approval in the 
November elections, which were so overwhelm- 
ingly Republican that Jefferson wrote to a 
friend that it looked as though the two parties 
were likely to be merged in one, and Madi- 
son stood only second to Jefferson in public 
estimation. 

To see her husband thus universally ap- 
proved, esteemed, and honored, was to this loyal 
wife the fulfilment of her highest ambition, 
and she bent all her efforts to strengthening 
the popularity which he had achieved. Her 
social life was guided by the principle which 
Jefferson had laid down in his inaugural, for 
the conduct of affairs between the American 
nation and foreign powers, " Honest friendship 
with all, entangling alliances with none." To 
her sister alone she indulged in confidences, 
and even then but sparingly. 

The fourth of March came and passed. 

Thomas Jefferson a second time accepted the 

responsibility of acting as pilot of the Ship of 

State, and keeping her, as he himself had said, 

108 



WIFE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE 

" on the Republican tack." The outlook was 
bright, and few saw the rocks and shoals ahead. 
In all this political hopefulness Mrs. Madison 
was an ardent sharer. The year which brought 
her so much happiness, however, brought her 
also a season of physical suffering, and of 
separation from her husband which was a 
still greater trial. A neglected injury to her 
knee threatened to develop into permanent 
lameness, and after several weeks of ineffec- 
tual treatment by Washington physicians, she 
was prevailed upon by her husband to go to 
Philadelphia and put herself under the care of 
the celebrated Dr. Philip Syng Physick. 

This gentleman, whose name and profession 
corresponded so curiously, had won a national 
reputation, and was known as " The Father of 
American Surgery." His portrait, done by Rem- 
brandt Peale, shows a clean shaven face with 
keen eyes and a handsome, rather aristocratic 
profile. His treatment of Mrs. Madison was 
so successful that at the end of July, 1805, we 
find her, who till now has been very despondent 
over her lameness, writing more hopefully to 
her sister, describing herself as comfortably 
lodged and feeling much improved. 

Dr. Physick put the knee in splints and ex- 
pressed himself as confident of being able to 
effect a cure, but declared that it would be a 
109 



DOLLY MADISON 

matter of time, requiring fortitude and patience 
on the part of the sufferer. Mrs. Madison bore 
this, like all her other troubles, bravely, and 
beguiled the tedious hours with the renewal 
of her old-time friendships and a constant cor- 
respondence with her husband, in which she 
reveals all that she is doing, saying, thinking 
and feeling. " I have had," she writes in one 
of these letters, " a lecture from S. L. on seeing 
too much company, and it brought to my mind 
the time when our Society used to control me 
entirely, and debar me from so many advantages 
and pleasures. Even now, I feel my ancient 
terror revive in a great degree." 

The gay Washington dame was by many de- 
grees removed from the young Quakeress who 
had moved demurely with downcast eyes along 
these monotonous streets nearly twenty years 
before, yet it is evident that the old surround- 
ings brought up once more the old associations, 
and the terror of being disciplined by the 
Meeting, of which she speaks jestingly, was not 
without a shadow of reality. 

But there were many associations of her 
girlish days to which her heart clung fondly, 
and never wavered in its loyalty amid all the 
excitements of new surroundings. Her old 
friends continued to be dear, and none the less 
because they were often in humble circum- 
110 



WIFE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE 

stances. During her Washington life she fre- 
quently made visits to Philadelphia, and Mr. 
Edward Coles, her husband's private secretary, 
afterward Governor of Illinois, escorted her 
about the town. On one occasion Mr. Coles 
told a friend whom he chanced to meet that he 
had taken Mrs. Madison to visit an old lady 
who kept a little shop. The shop-keeper and 
her visitor had adjourned for a cup of tea and 
a cosey chat to a room over the shop, where he 
had left them talking so fast that he could not 
get in a word. 

A suggestion of the influence of old asso- 
ciations is to be found in the use of " thee and 
thou " in the letters which Mrs. Madison sends 
from her arm-chair at Philadelphia in 1805, 
to her husband on his return to Washing- 
ton. There is not a word or a line in these 
letters which does not do her credit, and they 
are indeed a window into her heart showing 
clearly its tenderness, its forgetfulness of self 
and selfish suffering, its thoughtfulness for 
others, especially for him to whom she writes, 
and who is constantly in her thoughts waking 
or sleeping. In her dreams she sees him ill, 
and prays for an early letter to chase away the 
black vision. When the letter fails to arrive, 
she is so shaken as to be unable to write. On 
the night of his journey from Philadelphia to 
HI 



DOLLY MADISON 

Washington, when the worst perils which could 
have menaced him were the jolting of the 
public coach or the tossing of the packet, she 
finds herself unable to sleep, and when the 
watchman on his rounds announces a cloudy 
morning, her apprehensions of accident and 
cold become so great as to require the admin- 
istering of an opiate by her faithful friend, 
Betsey Pemberton. 

All this may perhaps raise a smile, but it is 
a kindly smile, as at the simplicity of a child, 
and we share her pleasure and relief when the 
next week brings her news of her beloved's 
safe arrival at Washington. " I have this mo- 
ment," she writes on the thirtieth of October, 
" perused with delight thy letter, my darling 
husband, with its enclosures. To find that you 
love me, have my child safe, and that my 
mother is well, seems to comprise all my 
happiness." 

In a few weeks Dr. Physick pronounced the 
knee far enough on the way to recovery to per- 
mit Mrs. Madison to rejoin her husband at the 
capital, and her joy was intensified by the pros- 
pect of again seeing her friend Mrs. Randolph, 
whose second visit to the White House was 
paid in the winter of 1805-6. On this occa- 
sion Mrs. Randolph brought with her her 
whole family consistin^^: of five daughters and 

112 



WIFE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE 

one son, and the circle was increased by the 
birth in Washington of a second son, the first 
child born under the roof of the White House. 
This boy was named James Madison, and of 
course was very dear to James Madison's wife, 
who was always a welcome visitor in the Jeffer- 
son-Eandolph nursery. Virginia Randolph, 
who became Mrs. Trist, wrote in after years, 
" Mrs. Madison was an intimate and much 
valued friend of my mother's, and her amiable, 
playful manners with children attracted my 
sisters and myself and made her a great favorite 
with us." 

Anne Randolph, another sister, was very 
beautiful, with classic head, auburn hair, and 
delicate complexion. On one occasion she went 
to a ball in company with a young friend at 
whose mother's house she dined and dressed for 
the company. Mrs. Randolph went to the same 
ball with Mrs. Cutts, the sister of Mrs. Madison. 
Seeing Anne enter the room, Mrs. Randolph 
fixed her near-sighted eyes upon her, and then 
turning to Mrs. Cutts asked, " Who is that 
beautiful girl ? " Mrs. Cutts answered in great 
amusement, " Why, woman, are you so un- 
natural a mother as not to recognize your own 
daughter ? " 

The Washington society over which Mrs. 
Randolph found Mrs. Madison most acceptably 

8 113 



DOLLY M ALL SON 

presiding, was full of strange contrasts. Sir 
Augustus Foster, who was the English Secretary 
of Legation, from 1804 to 1806, has left a 
sprightly description of the town and its gay 
life. " Most of the members of Congress," he 
says, " keep to their lodgings ; but still there 
are a sufficient number of them who are soci- 
able, or whose families come to the city for a 
season, and there is no want of handsome ladies 
for the balls, especially at Georgetown ; indeed, 
I never saw prettier girls anywhere. As there 
are but few of them, however, in proportion to 
the great number of men who frequent the 
places of amusement in the federal city, it is 
one of the most marrying places on the whole 
continent." 

Complimentary as the diplomat shows him- 
self to the outward appearance of American 
ladies, he finds their education defective and 
in consequence their conversation apt to flag. 
"- Dancing and music," he writes, " served to eke 
out the time, but one got tired of hearing the 
same song everywhere, even when it was, — 

* Just like love is yonder rose.' 

No matter how this was sung, the words alone 
were the man-traps ; the belle of the evening 
was declared to be just like both, and the 
people looked around as if the listener was 

114 



WIFE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE 

expected to become on the instant very tender 
and to propose." 

The chief entertainment among the men he 
declares to have been card-playing and gam- 
bling, a well-nigh universal habit, especially 
among the Southerners. Much however as he 
grumbles at the discomforts and provincialisms 
of Washington, he concludes : " In spite of its 
inconveniences and desolate aspect, it was, I 
think, the most agreeable town to reside in for 
any length of time." 

It is evident that the society of the new 
capital must have reflected the crudeness of 
the material conditions wliich environed it. 
The social life in those early days of the 
capital was essentially a village life, with all 
the petty gossip and pettier jealousies inevita- 
ble in a community whose whole population 
numbered only a few thousand ; but it was re- 
deemed from the deadening self-complacency 
of village life which, knowing no standard but 
its own, counts every outsider a barbarian and 
thanks Heaven for its own limitations. The 
men and women who made up this society 
were, many of them, world-citizens, well ac- 
quainted with the best that Europe had to 
offer, yet realizing that the air here was electric 
with a spirit not to be found elsewhere, and in 
its inspiration fully compensating them for 
115 



DOLLY MADISON 

liaving their lot cast as pioneers in this clearing 
in the western wilderness. They were actors 
who felt that they were playing great parts on 
a rude stage, and could afford to smile at the 
bare boards and improvised scenery. 

An air of cosmopolitanism, too, was added 
by the foreign element. Albert Gallatin, the 
Swiss, had come to devote his great talents to 
the service of his adopted country, and the 
subtle d'Yrujo, the treacherous De Paistre and 
the insular Merry bowed and smiled, offered 
snuff-boxes and strove to overreach one an- 
other as gracefully as though this provincial 
capital had been the oldest court in Europe. 

In and out among them all, cold, treacher- 
ous and fascinating, moved the figure of Aaron 
Burr. For a time the success of his plots ap- 
peared as easy as the descent to Avernus, but, 
of a sudden, the foreign governments with 
which he was tampering spoke out and declined 
the offered partnership. The King of Spain 
sent peremptory orders to the Marquis d'Yrujo, 
warning him that Spain would give no aid to 
Burr's plotting, and so the arch-schemer and 
adventurer turned his back on Washington 
and sought to start the ball of revolution in 
the West. His talents peculiarly fitted him 
for the part he was resolved to play, and he 
employed all the resources of his tact and bril- 
116 



WIFE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE 

liancy, in furthering his schemes and drawing 
in fresh recruits to his cause at every stop, and 
involving the unfortunate Blennerhassets inex- 
tricably in the web of treason. 

In a few more months the secret was out, 
the plots, so subtly and cautiously woven, were 
brushed away, as it were, in a moment, and 
Aaron Burr was a prisoner on trial for treason. 
The trial at Richmond was the event of the 
year 1807. John Marshall presided, and the 
greatest lawyers of the country battled over 
the question, of " guilty, or not guilty of 
treason against the United States." Randolph 
of Roanoke was foreman of the jury, and 
throughout all those weeks, the benches of the 
Richmond court-house were crowded with eager 
listeners from every part of the broad land. 
The nation outside held its breath, awaiting 
the verdict. Jefferson and Madison had rea- 
son to feel themselves almost as much on trial 
before the public as the criminal himself ; 
but there remains no word spoken or written 
by Mrs. Madison to indicate that she realized 
the gravity of the situation. 

There was however one political question 
which had power to move Mrs. Madison and 
this was now in full tide of agitation. Who 
should be the next Republican candidate for 
the presidency ? The two foremost rivals were 
117 



DOLLY MADISON 

James Madison and James Monroe. Jefferson, 
whose word was law to the party, declared that 
he could not as between two old and dear 
friends express a preference, but those who 
knew him best did not doubt that his choice 
lay with Madison. 

There was, however, a strong anti-Madison 
party including many men of influence, such as 
Smith of Maryland, Clay of Pennsylvania, 
and George Clinton, Jr. of New York. Seven- 
teen of those in opposition to Madison, with 
John Randolph at their head, drew up a formal 
protest which appeared in March. 1808. In 
this the objectors said : — 

"We are, perhaps, on the eve of a war with 
one of the greatest powers of Europe. In such a 
crisis, if unanimity in the choice of a president is 
necessary, that choice should be directed to a man 
eminently calculated by his tried energy and tal- 
ents to conduct the nation with firmness and wis- 
dom through the perils which surround it; a man 
who had not, in the hour of terror and persecution, 
deserted his post and sought in obscurity and re- 
tirement a shelter from the political tempest; to a 
man not suspected of undue partiality or enmity to 
either of the belligerent powers; to a man who had 
not forfeited his claim to public confidence by recom- 
mending a shameful bargain with the unprincipled 
speculators of the Yazoo companies, — a dishonor- 
able compact with fraud and corruption. 
118 



WIFE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE 

^'Is James Madison such a man ? We ask for 
energy, and we are told of his moderation ; we ask 
for talent, and the reply is his unassuming merit; 
we ask what were his services in the cause of Puh- 
lic Liberty, and we are directed to the pages of the 
^Federalist.' " 

This last thrust, with its hint of Madison's 
apostasy from the cause which the " Federal- 
ist " had represented, bears the unmistakable 
impress of John Randolph, whose bitterness 
knew no bounds, and who was determined to 
stop at nothing to prevent the nomination of 
a man whom he cordially detested. A letter 
written by him two years earlier from Bizarre 
and addressed to Monroe, goes to even greater 
length, and might tempt a cynic to smile at 
finding this vehement exponent of southern 
chivalry ready to invade the domestic circle and 
strike at a political opponent through an attack 
on his wife. 

After many denunciations of the already 
fore-shadowed nomination of Madison he 
writes : — 

'^ They [the old Republicans] are moreover deter- 
mined not to have a Yazoo President, if they can 
avoid it, nor one who has mixed in the intrigues 
of the last three or four years at Washington. 
There is another consideration, which I know not 
119 



DOLLY MADISON 

how to touch. You, my dear sir, cannot be igno- 
rant, although of all mankind you perhaps have the 
least cause to know it, how deeply the respecta- 
bility of any character may be impaired by an 
unfortunate matrimonial connection. I can pursue 
this subject no further. It is at once too delicate 
and too mortifying. Before the decision is ulti- 
mately made, I hope to have the pleasure of com- 
municating with you in person." 

Neither public opposition nor private malev- 
olence however could prevail against Madison, 
and unless Monroe was one of those who 
" demen gladly to the badder end," these dark 
insinuations could only have reacted upon the 
writer. In spite of Randolph's invective and 
innuendo; in spite of the most strenuous ef- 
forts of the Federalists and the desertion of 
many Republicans, when the electoral votes were 
counted in the presence of Congress on a Feb- 
ruary morning in 1809, James Madison was 
declared elected President of the United States 
with George Clinton as Vice-President. 

The year 1807 brought a great grief to Mrs. 
Madison in the death of her mother, who was 
staying at the time with her daughter Mary, 
Mrs. Jackson. The two letters which fol- 
low, written by Mrs, Jackson's husband to 
Madison, give an account of her mother's last 
hours : — 

120 



WIFE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE 

Clarksburg, Sunday Ev^ 18*1^ October, 1807. 

My dear Friend, --It is with grief unutter- 
able I communicate to you the painful intelligence 
that ere jou receive this our beloved & Much 
respected friend Mrf Payne will be no more. She is 
now while I write this dying away — her attack 
has been sudden, unexpected, & severe — ou Wed- 
nesday evening she had made her little round 
to a few of our neighbors & returned home in 
unusually good health & spirits. Mr? Jackson 
appeared to be recovering, & that with the pros- 
pect of soon joining you all seemed to increase 
them — At the usual hour she went to Bed and 
about three o'clock A. M. I was informed by a 
servant that she was extremely ill. I hastened to 
her chamber & enquired what was the Matter, 
she answered with a voice broken & much al- 
tered that a violent stroke of the dead Palsy had 
deprived her entirely of the use of her left side. It 
extends to her head & neck. In a few Minutes 
the Doctor arrived, she repeated to him the extent 
of the attack & that it would be fatal — I sup- 
ported her for a short time in my arms, & found 
that her neck was stiffened by the attack, & that 
she had no use of any part of her body — In the 
space of an hour she became speechless & fell into 
a state of insensibilit}^ which has continued with- 
out intermission ever since — she appears to be 
without pain & has weakened gradually — The 
application of bleeding, blisters, rubbing, &c. have 
121 



DOLLY MADISON 

not produced the smallest effect — The effect of 
this attack upon Mrf Jackson has been & still is 
very alarming — Heaven only knows what will be 
the result. 

Farewell — Yours truly, 

J. G. Jackson. 

Clarksburg, October 25*^, 1807. 
My dear Sir, — My letter by the last Post in- 
formed you that our beloved Friend, Mr^ Payne, 
was ill beyond the reach of recovery — Alas ! my 
prediction was too fatally verified, she continued 
without any alteration except an increased debil- 
ity until Wednesday evening last when she ex- 
pired — The shock which her sickness & death 
produced upon the health & spirits of my poor sick 
wife has been alarming in the extreme — I have 
watched over her incessantly ever since, oftentimes 
with the expectation that the hour which was clos- 
ing on us would survive her — & altho I have occa- 
sionally indulged the hope that in a few weeks she 
would be well enough to set off in a close light 
waggon which I have procured for her & that a 
change of situation would aid me in restoring her 
to health, still my dear Friend, my hand trembles 
when I write you, I fear that the hope is illusive — 
last night and to day she has been worse than for 
several days past, her fever & Chills have been 
severe in the extreme & her stomach so disordered 
as to baffle all the medical skill this Country can 
122 



WIFE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE 

afford — But I will yet hope that my cup of misery 
is almost exhausted & tho' shorn indeed, still that 
God will temper the wind to the shorn Lamb — 
Farewell, my dear friend, 

J. G. Jackson. 



123 



YII 

IN THE WHITE HOUSE. 

The fourth of March, in the year 1809, wit- 
nessed the inauguration of James Madison as 
President of the United States. The day found 
all the nation in a state of cheerfulness, if not 
of enthusiasm. The Jeffersonians were glad 
because Jefferson's most intimate friend and 
disciple was to succeed him ; the Federalists 
were glad because, at least, the " Arch-Fiend of 
Democracy " was out of office ; and the whole 
people were glad at the promised lifting of the 
hateful embargo which was paralyzing com- 
merce and pauperizing merchants and sailors 
alike. 

One class, however, resented and deplored 
the continuance of the power of the Democrats, 
as the followers of Jefferson were now coming 
to be called. All the barbers were Federalists, 
owing, it was said, to the fact that those leaders 
wore powder and long queues which required 
dressing by the barbers, while the Democrats 
wore short hair or small queues tied carelessly 



IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

with a ribbon. On the nomination of Madison, 
a barber burst out : " The country is doomed ; 
what presidents we might have, sir ! Just look 
at Dagget, of Connecticut, or Stockton, of New 
Jersey ! What queues they have got, sir ! — 
as big as your wrist and powdered every day, 
sir, like the real gentlemen they are. Such 
men, sir, would confer dignity upon the chief 
magistracy; but this little Jim Madison, with 
a queue no bigger than a pipe-stem ! Sir, it is 
enough to make a man forswear his country." 
As the inauguration ball would necessitate an 
unusual amount of hair-dressing, however, even 
the barbers were in good humor on this day, 
and added their plaudits to those of the crowds 
who thronged the streets of the capital. 

The festivities of celebration everywhere 
marked the public joy. Salutes of cannon from 
Fort Warburton and the Navy Yard ushered in 
the dawn. Troops of militia gathered early at 
Georgetown and Alexandria, and marched to 
Washington to escort Mr. Madison to the Capi- 
tol. Ten thousand people gathered along the 
way to see the procession, which everywhere 
was greeted with great hurrahing and throwing 
up of hats and waving of handkerchiefs. 

Arrived at the Capitol, Madison descended 
from his carriage and entered the Hall of 
Representatives, where, until the inaugura- 

125 



DOLLY MADISON 

tion of Monroe, the newly elected president 
took the oath of office. Madison was attended 
by the Attorney-General and other cabinet 
officers. One who saw him describes him as 
looking unusually well, the excitement of the 
occasion lending color to his pale student 
face, and dignity to his small, slender figure. 
He was dressed in a suit of clothes wholly of 
American manufacture, made of the wool from 
merino sheep bred and reared in this country. 
His coat was from the manufactory of Colonel 
Humphreys, and his waistcoat and small-clothes 
from that of Chancellor Livingston, both being 
gifts offered in token of respect by those gentle- 
men. At tw^elve o'clock, with marked dignity 
and composure of manner, he took the oath of 
office, administered by Chief- Justice Marshall 
and, amid deafening cheers, as President of the 
United States began his inaugural address. 

When the inaugural ceremonies were ended, 
Madison reviewed the infantry drawn up to 
receive him, and then, escorted by cavalry, re- 
turned to his home, where Mrs. Madison's hos- 
pitality had prepared an abundance of good 
cheer to be set before the crowds who called to 
pay their respects to the new chief magistrate. 
The festivities of the day ended with a brilliant 
inauguration ball, held at Long's Hotel. In 
an old number of a journal of Portland, Maine, 
126 



IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

I find a glowing description of the glories 
of this ball, written by a correspondent who 
took part in its gayeties and sent a detailed 
account to be read by his fellow-townsmen in 
that then remote corner of the country. " Up- 
wards of four hundred persons," he says, 
" graced the scene, which was not a little en- 
livened by the handsome display of female fash- 
ion and beauty." The toilets, according to the 
standards of the day, were sumptuous ; and, 
so far had Washington progressed toward the 
dignity of a metropolis, that its belles no longer 
found it necessary to go to Philadelphia for 
their finery. 

In the advertising columns of the daily 
papers at this time Mrs. Sweeney informs the 
ladies of Washington that she has again 
commenced the " Millinery & Mantua Making 
business," and Mrs. Walker " acquaints the 
Ladies of the City of Washington and its 
vicinity, that on Monday morning, in the Front 
Room of Mr. Peltz's house near the Centre 
Market, Pennsylvania Avenue, she opened and 
-offers for sale a Fresh and Elegant assortment 
of Fashionable silk velvets. Turbans, Pelices, 
Great-Coats, &c." 

The beautiful women who gathered at Long's 
Hotel to welcome the advent of the new ad- 
ministration with music and dancing, were 

127 



DOLLY MADISON 

arrayed in all the gorgeousness of this newly- 
imported " fresh and elegant assortment," 
but none were so splendid as the wife of the 
President. 

Shade of John Payne, what would you have 
said, had you walked in, clad in your sober 
suit of Quaker gray, and seen in the very 
centre of this worldly company your daughter 
Dorothy attired in a robe of yellow velvet, her 
bare neck and arms hung with pearls, and her 
head nodding beneath a Paris turban with a 
bird-of-paradise plume ! Perchance with deeper 
insight than marked your earthly vision, you 
mi2:ht have looked beneath all these frivolous 
trappings and found your daughter's heart 
still as loyal, true and loving as when it beat 
beneath the lawn kerchief folded above the gown 
of ashen gray, and so have been satisfied. 

This inauguration-ball was indeed a brilliant 
assemblage, with the gay dresses of the ladies 
and the no less gay uniforms of the different 
legations. A correspondent of the Baltimore 
" Whig," in describing the scene, takes occasion 
at the same time to satisfy an old grudge 
against Robert Goodloe Harper, who shone at 
Washington in the double capacity of politi- 
cian and man of fashion. " Goody," says the 
" Whig " correspondent, " came to the Inaugu- 
ration Ball, — I swear it, if you doubt me ! 
128 



IN THE WHITE ROUSE 

He was perfumed like a Milliner and a huge 
knot of black ribbon nodded on each shoe. A 
wag present remarked that Goody wore Cock- 
ades in his shoes to mark the seat of his 
soldiership ever since Wilkinson invited him 
to the field. What a world it is ! " Such were 
the amenities of journalism at the_ beginning 
of the century. 

No one among the distinguished figures who 
surrounded the President and Mrs. Madison was 
so conspicuous as the tall form of Jefferson. 
Remembering, perhaps, his own feelings at the 
conduct of his predecessor, John Adams, in 
leaving Washington abruptly, apparently to 
avoid witnessing the inauguration of the new 
president, Jefferson seemed determined to do 
all in his power to lend brilliancy to those 
opening scenes of Madison's administration. 
Never had he appeared more genial, more 
ready-witted, or more light-hearted than at 
Mrs. Madison's first reception. Full of jest, 
and repartee, he shed the spirit of gayety in a 
shining circle about him. As the ladies 
pressed near him, a friend whispered jestingly : 
"You see they will follow you." ^' That is as 
it should be," answered Jefferson, " since I am 
too old to follow them. I remember," he 
added, "when Dr. FrankHn's friends were 
taking leave of him in France, the ladies 

9 129 



DOLLY MADISON 

almost smothered him with embraces. On his 
introducing me to them as his successor, I 
told them that among the rest of his privi- 
leges, I wished he would transfer this one to me. 
But he answered : ' No, no ; you are too young 
a man.' " When the ex-President had finished, 
a young lady who stood near liim suggested 
that that invidious bar no longer existed. 
What response he made is not recorded ; but 
when some one commented on the contrast 
which his gayety presented to the exhaustion 
and care-worn aspect of the newly installed 
president, Jefferson responded : " Can you won- 
der at it ? My shoulders have just been freed 
from a heavy burden ; his just laden with it." 
Jefferson did indeed seem to feel all the 
exhilaration of a released school-boy at his 
escape from the cares of office which had 
pressed with increasing weight throughout the 
past eight years. As soon as the inaugural 
festivities were ended he made ready for de- 
parture to Monticello. His household goods 
he sent ahead in a wagon train drawn by six 
mules and four horses, the loads surmounted 
by eleven black servants, forming as may be 
imagined a striking procession. Desirous, it 
may be, of avoiding the attention such a cortege 
was sure to attract, the master drove off from 
Washington in a phaeton attended by a single 
130 



IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

servant, and soon exchanged the carnage for 
the saddle. 

A few days later he writes to the Madisons : 
" I had a very fatiguing journey, having found 
the roads exceedingly bad. The last three 
days I found it better to be on horseback, and 
travelled eight hours in as disagreeable a snow- 
storm as I ever saw." His Virginia estate was 
by no means at its loveliest in that raw, bleak 
March weather, and he reported his disappoint- 
ment at finding no oats or tobacco sown and 
little done in the garden, no vegetation visible 
but the red-maple, weeping- willow, and lilac. 

The Federalist papers, which had pelted him 
with epithets and lampoons, fired parting shots 
after his retreating form as it disappeared from 
public life. One of these poetic compositions 
was a parody, and ran thus : — 

" O ! whither, I pray is our Highland Daddy bound? 

O ! whither, I pray, is our Highland Daddy bound? 

He 's bound to his plantation with fifty thousand pound, 

"With a gun-boat embargoed to plough his native ground. 

Oh ! what Avill he do with his philosophic fogsl 

Oh ! what will he do with his philosophic fogs? 

He '11 discover more salt-mountains — He '11 breed more 
horned frogs. 

He '11 improve his whirling chair and call wood-chucks prairie- 
dogs." 

With the departure of Jefferson the burden 
of office fell for the first time wholly upon Madi- 

131 



DOLLY MADISON 

son's shoulders, and it is little wonder that he 
was oppressed by the difficulty of worthily filling 
the position hallowed and dignified by the 
memories of Washington, Adams, and Jeffer- 
son. It was no less serious a matter for Dolly 
Madison to feel devolving upon herself the 
responsibility of living up to the standards set 
by Martha Washington and Abigail Adams. 

One of Mrs. Madison's predecessors was fully 
impressed by the solemnity of the situation. 
With somewhat irritating self-complacency 
Mrs. Adams writes to her daughter in June of 
this year : " With respect to Mrs. Madison's 
influence it ought to he [the italics are my own] 
such as Solomon describes his virtuous woman's 
to be, — one who should do him good and not 
evil all the days of her life. So that the heart 
of her husband may safely trust in her. I 
believe I may say with safety that her predeces- 
sors left her no evil example." The last sen- 
tence recalls the words of the Parisian lady 
who naively remarked to Dr. Franklin : " Je 
ne trouve que moi qui a toujours raisony 

Perhaps when Mrs. Adams found her son 
appointed Minister to St. Petersburg she took 
a more genial view of Dolly Madison's influence, 
and would have been willing to substitute " will 
be " for that chilly and cautious " ought to be." 

It must be admitted that under Mrs. Madi- 
132 



IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

son's influence, life at the White House lost 
something of its simplicity. Dress grew gayer, 
entertainments more elaborate, and when the 
President's wife took the air it was in a chariot 
drawn by four horses, — a chariot built by 
Fielding of Philadelphia at a cost of fifteen 
hundred dollars. The holding of levees and 
weekly dinner-parties at the White House, with 
all the inevitable household cares, proved a 
serious strain on Mrs. Madison's health and 
strength, but after all, as Monroe once observed 
when asked if he were not completely worn 
out by the weary hours of standing and hand- 
shaking at his receptions, " a little flattery will 
support one through a great deal of fatigue." 

In the first year of Mrs. Madison's occupancy 
of the White House, Congress appropriated the 
modest sum of five thousand dollars for the 
further furnishing and decoration of the man- 
sion. How the money was expended is shown 
by the accounts of Latrobe, the superintendent 
of public buildings : — 

Account of B. Henry Latrohe, with the Furni- 
ture of the Presidents house. May 29^A, 

1809. 

IK 
To this Sum paid to him on account 

by a Warrant on the Treasury $5,000, — • 

133 ' 



DOLLY MADISON 

Per Contra C^ 

By this Sum p4 Louis Deblois for two 

Mirrors & expenses 1.060. — 

By d? d° to settle small 

acctf — 550. — 

Mem: This sum has been nearly ex- 
pended for articles of household use 
& repairs, and is to be accounted for 
by Mr Deblois. 

By d° Louis Mark of New York 

for Table Linnen, & Looking Glass, 

on ace* 1.225. — 

By d*> Paul S. Brown for China, 556.15 

By d" Charles Bird, for Knives, 

forks bottle stands, Waiters, And- 
irons, &? 220.90 

By d° John Cox, for sundries 840.70 

(remittance to Peter Harvie Ph*) 

By d** Geo. Blake for a Guitar 28.00 

By d** Andrew Hazlehurst for a 

Pianoforte 458.00 

By Commission @ 2 p Cent 100. — 

$5,038.75 

Latrobe reports a further expenditure of one 
thousand dollars for the curtains, chairs, and 
sofas of the drawing-room. A very magnificent 
apartment this state drawing-room of Mrs. Dolly 
Madison was considered in those days. It was 
upholstered in yellow satin with stiff sofas and 
134 



IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

high-backed chairs. Its long windows were 
hung with damask formed into valances and 
festoons. A rod running around the top of the 
room held another fall of the brocade, and the 
fire-board beneath the mantel repeated the same 
yellow damask arranged in the fluted pattern 
known as " a rising sun." No wonder all this 
magnificence taxed Latrobe's allowance from 
Congress. Despite the yellow satin upholstery 
and the great mirrors, however, the White- 
House was still but scantily furnished, and the 
wide, bare halls echoed drearily to every passing 
footstep. 

The city without, like the White House 
within, had not greatly changed in its material 
features from its unfinished state in the days 
when Mrs. Adams bewailed its primitive con- 
dition. The foreigner still wrote of it as a 
spoiled wilderness, resembling nothing so much 
as Hampton Heath, and told tales of having 
started a covey of partridges within a hundred 
yards of the Capitol. The pavements of side- 
walks still ended abruptly on the edge of 
sloughs through which the pedestrian must 
flounder above his shoe-tops, and the Abb^ 
Corrda's jesting title, given some years later, of 
" The City of Magnificent Distances," happily 
set forth the only claim to magnificence which 
the capital possessed. 

135 



DOLLY MADISON 

Yet the society was steadily advancing in 
numbers, importance, and air of cosmopoli- 
tanism. Mrs. Madison was surrounded in 
these early days of her husband's administra- 
tion by a group of men and women whose fame 
has survived for well-nigh a century, and the 
universal and sincere regard with which they 
regarded her would in itself constitute a strong 
claim for her own distinction. Nearest to her 
naturally stood Madison's official family, George 
Clinton of New York, Eustis of Massachusetts, 
Gallatin the Swiss, with his American wife, 
Paul Hamilton, and Colonel Monroe, the Sec- 
retary of State. 

James Monroe, the man who stood upon the 
stepping-stone to the presidency, was of " the 
Virginia dynasty ; " of tall figure, dressed in 
the old style, with small-clothes, silk hose, 
knee-buckles and pumps. His brow was some- 
what retreating and unimpressive, but his eye so 
clear and straightforward that it justified Jeffer- 
son's remark that Monroe was so honest that if 
you turned his soul inside out there would not 
be a spot on it. Inseparable from the Secre- 
tary of State was his wife, formerly a Miss 
Kortwright, famous as a New York beauty in 
the latter days of the Revolution, and known 
afterward in Paris as " la belle Americaine.^^ 

The South furnished its full share of con- 
136 



IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

spiciious figures to Washington society. John 
Marshall towered above all. John Randolph 
was there with his high-pitched voice, his clean- 
shaven, " young-old " face and sarcastic mouth. 
Henry Clay, from Mrs. Madison's own Hanover 
County, once " The Mill-boy of the Slashes," 
now high in the councils of state, retained all 
his old-time simplicity. His face was peculiar 
and striking, with sharp eyes twinkling under 
overhanging eyebrows, with long, straight hair 
and deep lines drawn about the lips and nos- 
trils. Calhoun, too, came in 1811 to take part 
in Congressional affairs, and was one of the 
most noticeable figures, his great head loaded 
down with a weight of shaggy, ragged locks. 
His wife was among the intimate friends of 
Mrs. Madison's circle, as was also the brilliant 
Mrs. Van Ness, whose entertainments were 
among the leading social events of Washington 
in those days. 

The father of Mrs. Van Ness was David 
Burns, who had owned a tract of land in the 
heart of the city when it was surveyed for 
the future capital. This ground is described in 
the original patent of 1661 as " The Widow's 
Mite, lyeing on the east side of the Anacostin 
River, on the north side of a branch or inlett 
in the said river called Tyber." 

Shrewd Davy early perceived the value of his 

137 



DOLLY MADISON 

land, and was very stiff in refusing to part with 
it. "Washington strove to deal with him, but 
the old Scotchman, so tradition says, answered 
testily ; " I suppose you think people here are 
going to take your grist for pure grain ; but," 
he added with crushing sarcasm, " what would 
you have been if you had n't married the widow 
Custis ? " The right of eminent domain, how- 
ever, forced even stubborn David Burns to 
give up his land, but not till he had obtained 
a price which made his daughter one of the 
greatest heiresses of the country. Her hus- 
band, Mr. John P. Van Ness, was a prominent 
citizen of Washington, and their house a centre 
of social gayety. Mrs. Van Ness too was a 
leader of the city charities, as well of the soci- 
ety, and was largely instrumental in founding 
the City Orphan Asylum, in which Mrs. Madi- 
son was first directress. 

To this asylum Mrs. Madison contributed not 
only the gifts of " twenty dollars and a cow," set 
down to her credit in the books of the institu- 
tion, but a sympathy and devotion quite beyond 
calculation, and an amount of time which 
could only have been taken from her busy life 
at the cost of much real self-sacrifice. She 
took upon herself the heavy work of cutting 
out the clothing for the orphans. Mrs. Lee, in 
after years, asked her how she could submit to 

138 



IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

its fatigues, and how she endured the great 
welts raised by the heavy shears upon the 
white hands which were among her chief 
beauties. " Oh ! " exclaimed Mrs. Madison, " it 
was delicious work ; I never enjoyed anything 
as much." 

In Mrs. Madison's occupations, charitable, 
domestic, and social, she was ably assisted by 
her two sisters, Lucy and Anna, both of whom 
were at this time living in Washington, — Mrs. 
Cutts settled there by her husband's public 
duties, and Mrs. Washington (Lucy Payne) 
having made her home with Mrs. Madison 
after the death of her husband. The trio of 
sisters attracted much attention and admira- 
tion. Washington Irving, in a letter to his 
friend Brevoort, written from the capital, and 
dated the thirteenth of January, 1811, gives an 
entertaining description of his first meeting 
with them, and of his first experience of 
Washington society. 

^'I arrived at the Inn about dusk," he says, 
^^and understanding that Mrs. Madison was to have 
her levee or drawing-room that very evening, I swore 
by all the gods I would be there. But how ? was 
the question. I had got away down into George- 
town, and the persons to whom my letters of intro- 
duction were directed lived all upon Capitol Hill 
about three miles off, while the President's house 
139 



DOLLY MADISON 

was exactly half way. Here was a non-plus enough 
to startle any man of less enterprising spirit ; 
but I had sworn to be there, and I determined to 
keep my oath, and like Caleb Quotem ' have a place 
at the Review.' So I mounted with a stout heart 
to my room ; resolved to put on my pease-blossoms 
and silk stockings, gird up my loins and sally 
forth on my expedition, and like a vagabond knight- 
errant trust to Providence for success and whole 
bones. 

'' Just as I descended from my attic full of this 
valorous spirit I was met by my landlord, with 
whom and the head waiter, by the bye, I had held 
a private cabinet council on the subject. Bully 
Rook informed me that there was a party of gentle- 
men just going from the house, one of whom, Mr. 
Fontaine Maury of New York, had offered his 
services to introduce me to ^the Sublime Porte.' 
I cut one of my best opera flourishes ; skipped into 
the dressing-room, popped my head into the hands 
of a sanguinary Jacobinical barber who carried 
havoc and desolation into the lower regions of my 
face; mowed down all the beard on one of my 
cheeks and laid the other in blood like a conquered 
province; and, thus, like a second Banquo, with 
^twenty mortal murthers on my head;' in a few 
minutes I emerged from dirt and darkness into the 
blazing splendor of Mrs. Madison's drawing- 
room. 

" Here I was most graciously received ; found 
a crowded collection of great and little men, of 
140 



IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

ugly old women and beautiful young ones, and in 
ten minutes was hand and glove with half the 
people in the assemblage. 

^* Mrs. Madison is a fine, portly, buxom dame, 
who has a smile and a pleasant word for every- 
body. Her sisters, Mrs. Cutts and Mrs. Washing- 
ton, are like the two Merry Wives of Windsor ; 
but as to Jemmy Madison — Ah ! poor Jemmy ! 
— he is but a withered little apple- John. '^ 

A month or so later Irving writes to his 
brother that he does not indulge any very san- 
guine hopes of securing the diplomatic appoint- 
ment in search* of which he had come to 
Washington, as he finds that the matter is 
generally left to the minister, in this case a 
stranger to him. But that he still cherished 
some hope is shown by a subsequent para- 
graph : " The President on its being mentioned 
to him," Irving writes, " said some very hand- 
some things of me, and I make no doubt will 
express a wish in my favor on the subject, 
more especially as Mrs. Madison is a sworn 
friend of mine, and indeed all the ladies of 
the household and myself are great cronies." 
It is pleasant to think of Mrs. Madison thus 
befriending the young aspirant destined to 
become the first American man-of-letters 
worthy to bear the name. Her influence, how- 
ever, did not apparently suffice to secure the ap- 
141 



DOLLY MADISON 

pointment, as he had doubtless hoped that it 
might, since her political power was rated very 
high in her day and generation. 

Even after the lapse of many years, in the 
recently published letters of James G. Blaine, 
that shrewd observer, familiar with all the 
traditions of Washington, writes of Mrs. Madi- 
son as a political force. In the course of a 
series of comments on the influence exerted 
by the wives of the different presidents, he 
says : " Mrs. Madison saved the administra- 
tion of her husband, held him back from the 
extremes of Jeffersonism, and enabled him to 
escape from the terrible dilemma of the war of 
'12. But for her, De Witt Clinton would have 
been chosen president in 1812." Whether the 
facts bear out quite so large a claim, may be 
questioned, but there is little doubt that many 
appointments were attributed to her interces- 
sion, and a study of her character makes it 
probable that, however little she may have 
desired to mingle in general political affairs, 
she was glad when the opportunity oifered to 
be of service to her friends, and now and then 
gave them pieces of timely and serviceable 
advice. 

Much flotsam and jetsam of anecdote have 
gathered about the figure of Mrs. Madison 
wliile mistress of the White House. Most of 

142 



IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

them are trivial ; some of them apocryphal, but 
of value as showing at least the popular senti- 
ment, and the desire to preserve the records 
of her warmth and kindliness of heart. 

One story represents two old ladies from the 
country, escorted by a friend of Mrs. Madison's 
to the White House where the family were 
still at breakfast. To the surprise of the rural 
visitors, the woman they had come to see 
appeared in a stuff dress of dark gray, protected 
by a large housewifely white apron, and with 
a linen kerchief pinned about her neck. Her 
simplicity of manner and attire completely 
swept away their awe, and before departing 
one of them found courage to exclaim : " Per- 
haps you wouldn't mind if I kissed you, — just 
to tell the folks about." 

On a subsequent occasion at one of her 
levees, her attention was drawn to another 
rustic visitor, a youth who was evidently suf- 
fering all the torments of embarrassment. He 
had at last ventured to help himself to a cup 
of coffee when Mrs. Madison walked up and 
addressed him. In the surprise of the moment 
the lad dropped the saucer and strove to crowd 
the cup into his pocket. But his tactful hostess 
took no notice of the accident except to observe 
that in such a crowd no one could avoid being 
jostled, and straightway turned the conversa- 

143 



DOLLY MADISON 

tion to the boy's family, and ended by sending 
her regards to his excellent mother and bidding 
the servant bring another cup of coffee. 

A story of similar import is related by Wil- 
liam C. Preston in his unpublished journal. He 
describes his going as a youth to the White 
House to pay his respects to the President and 
Mrs. Madison. The drawing-room when he 
entered was ablaze with brilliant uniforms and 
gorgeous toilettes made doubly dazzling by 
the reflection of many mirrors. In the centre 
he saw Mrs. Madison, a tall, portly, elegant 
lady, with a turban on her head and a snuff- 
box in her hand. " She advanced straight 
towards me," he writes, " and extending her 
left hand said : ' Are you William Campbell 
Preston, the son of my old friend and most 
beloved kinswoman, Sally Campbell ? Sit down, 
my son, for you are my son, and I am the 
first person who ever saw you in this world.' " 
Turning then with a graciousness which 
charmed the young man, she introduced him 
to the circle of young girls about her, giving 
some special clue to each, and ending with 
" your kinswoman, Sally Coles." Who can 
estimate the effect of such trifling episodes as 
these in making an administration popular 
perhaps even to the extent quoted above of 
saving it ! 

144 



IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

Her notions of Virginia hospitality Mrs. 
Madison never abandoned throughout her stay 
in Washington. She counted the nation's 
guests her guests, and she devoted all her time 
and energy to ministering to the comfort and en- 
joyment of those about her, and in particular of 
strangers and foreigners. Jackson, the British 
Minister at the time, wrote home of his amuse- 
ment when during his first conference with 
President Madison a negro-servant knocked at 
the door and brought in a tray bountifully laden 
with punch and seed-cake. There is no record 
that the English diplomat declined the viands, 
however little he appreciated the spirit which 
prompted the sending of them. 

The weariness inevitably resulting from such 
ceaseless activity as Mrs. Madison's made her 
very glad when, in the summer of 1811, the 
President found himself able to take a few 
weeks of rest in the bracing air of Montpellier. 

A letter sent to Mr. Madison on the occasion 
of their departure is interesting as affording an 
illustration of the difficulties with which Mrs. 
Madison contended in her efforts to please 
every one and give offence to none : — 

Monday Evening, Aug. — 1811. 
Sir, — To prevent any Suspicion of a deficiency 
in respect to you and your Lady whom we have 
10 145 



DOLLY MADISON 

never ceased to more than respect & esteem — I 
am unwilling to permit you to depart without ex- 
pressing our sincere regret that when your Depar- 
ture was made known to all our Friends by her 
farewell visit to them, and they were thereby 
enabled to pay their parting respects, we remained 
ignorant thereof, and were consequently precluded 
from joining in so affectionate a visit. Had it 
been merely accident, we should not in apologizing 
for an apparent want of attention have had to 
mingle with our regrets any of those feelings which 
afflict while they affect: — but I have long had to 
lament a marked distance and coldness towards 
me, for which I cannot account, and am the more 
affected by it, because we once enjoyed the happi- 
ness of being considered as among your Eriends. 
It would have been kind to have mentioned any 
cause of dissatisfaction rather than wound us by 
exhibiting to the world our misfortune in the loss 
of your friendship & esteem. — 

Farewell, & may the Almighty bless you & 
yours. — 

William Thornton. 

To the President of the United States. 

The first of October found Mr. and Mrs. 
Madison again in Washington refreshed and 
reinvigorated, though the citizens of the capital 
were suffering from a low fever resulting from 
the unfinished condition of a canal. 

In the autumn of this year (1811) the poet- 
146 



i 



IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

politician, Joel Barlow, author of The Hasty 
Pudding and Revolutionary pamphlets, was 
sent abroad as Minister to France. Barlow 
had hoped for a still higher office. In a 
letter written two years earlier, he congratu- 
lates the President on his election, and offers 
his views on the conduct of the government. 
He confesses that he had expected the posi- 
tion of Secretary of State, and observes that 
it was his extreme solicitude for the good 
of his country which led him to desire the 
place. 

Apparently Madison differed with him as to 
the best interests of the country, for it was not 
until 1811 that he received any appointment, 
and then to a foreign embassy. This is one 
of the appointments which may, perhaps, be 
traced to Mrs. Madison's influence, as the Bar- 
lows were among her most intimate friends, 
and during the whole term of their residence 
abroad, which was ended by the sudden death 
of Barlow, near Krakow in Poland, in 1812, 
they kept up a brisk correspondence with her. 

I deprecate the contempt of the advanced 
woman when I confess, as I am compelled to 
do, that the theme of these mutual letters even 
to and from Paris, in the days pulsating with 
those Napoleonic conquests and disasters which 
were shaking Europe to its centre, was chiefly 
147 



DOLLY MADISON 

" cloaths." " Our girls " said Barlow to Mrs. 
Madison, " will write you about Courts and 
fashion, and finery." His wife, in another letter 
in which she urges Mrs. Madison's sister Lucy to 
come over to Paris for the winter, adds : " I want 
to send you some pretty things which are the 
high style here, gold and silver with silk done on 
mull. Mr. Lee has sent you so mucli of every 
kind of dress, and it is so difficult to send to 
the post and then to get any one to take 
charge of valuable things, that I shall send 
nothing." 

Mrs. Madison in turn writes to Mrs. Barlow, 
in the spring of 1812, mentioning incidentally 
that the embargo has been laid on, and that 
war is imminent, that the Vice-President is 
thought to be dying, and that there are rumors 
that Napoleon has seized the " Hornet." Hav- 
ing disposed of these trifling items her interest 
kindles to the real subject of her letter, the 
ribbons and flowers and gowns recently re- 
ceived, which she pronounces enchanting; but 
fears she will never be able to order any more, 
as the duties on these amounted to two thousand 
dollars. 

Part of this Parisian finery, no doubt, found 

its way into the wedding outfit of Mrs. Lucy 

Washington, who was married in March of 

this year to Judge Todd, of the Supreme Court, 

148 



IN THE WRITE HOUSE / 

a widower with several children. He was much 
older than herself ; but the choice was com- 
mended by the Madisons who had found dis- 
parity of age no barrier to domestic happiness, 
and who knew Judge Todd to be a man of 
sound character and marked ability. 

Mrs. Madison had now, in 1812, reached her 
forty-fourth year, but she held her youthful 
appearance still, not perhaps without artificial 
aid, for one of her warmest admirers admitted 
that she used rouge and powder, but claimed 
that it was from no motives of vanity, but only 
to give pleasure to those who looked at her. 
However this may be, her good spirits and 
sweet temper were at least her own, and abode 
with her to the end. 

Her son, Payne Todd, was now a young man 
grown. He had been at school in Baltimore, 
and there had been a project of sending him to 
Princeton, but, apparently, he had shown little 
desire for a college education, or, indeed, any 
inclination for scholarly pursuits. His mother's 
heart, however, was still full of schemes for his 
future, and of hopes for his usefulness and 
prominence. It is seldom given to mortals to 
enjoy such fulness of satisfaction as was Mrs. 
Madison's at this period. She possessed to the 
full the three gifts which have been declared 
requisite to a happy life : She had much to do, 

149 



DOLLY MADISON 

much to love, and much to hope for ; but 
clouds and gloom were gathering thick and 
fast around her country and her Imsband, and 
for the next three years, Dolly Madison was 
destined to walk in their shadow. 



150 



VIII 

WAR CLOUDS 

On a June afternoon in the year 1812, the 
** National Intelligencer " of Washington City, 
made the announcement that war had been 
declared by the United States against Great 
Britain. The night mail bore copies of the 
paper far and wide, and the next day knots of 
people gathered at every tavern and post-office 
along the routes to discuss the political situa- 
tion. On the morning of June twentieth the 
news reached New York, and was confirmed by 
a bulletin issued from a fort off the Battery, 
now Castle Garden. In the broad, tranquil 
harbor lay a fleet of merchant vessels in the 
idleness enforced by the new embargo, pro- 
claimed again in the spring of this year. Over 
the tops of their masts hung tar-barrels, used 
to protect the wood from rotting, and known 
familiarly and derisively as '' Madison's night- 
caps." But among these merchant-men, list- 
lessly tossing on the summer tide or moored 
151 



DOLLY MADISON 

to their wharves, was a group of American 
warships, full of life and eager preparation. 

On Sunday the twenty-first of June the 
strongest naval force which the country could 
muster, a squadron consisting of four ships, the 
President, the Congress, the Hornet, and the 
Argus, heaved anchor, and with the United 
States flag flying at the mast-head of every 
vessel, put out to sea in search of British cruis- 
ers. War had begun. 

War ! For the first time in her life Dolly 
Madison was now to learn the meaning of the 
word. As a little child she had, it is true, 
lived in an invaded country, but the raiders 
had passed by at a distance, and the echoes of 
the guns at Williamsburg and Yorktown were 
faint and far from the peaceful Hanover 
County plantation, and youth recks little of 
everything that passes beyond the grasp of its 
touch and sight and hearing. In the twenty- 
nine years of peace which had followed the 
close of the Revolution, she like the rest of the 
world had had time to forget, and the peace 
and prosperity of the nation had come to be 
taken for granted and as a matter of course. 
Mighty changes these twenty-nine years had 
wrought. The steamboat had appeared, and 
the press had grown into an enormous power. 
The population of the country had nearly 

152 



WAR CLOUDS 

doubled. The area of its territory (thanks 
to the Louisiana purchase) had more than 
doubled. 

The United States possessed at this time 
in comparison with Revolutionary days a great 
advantage for war-making in its compacted 
nationality, and its centralized government; 
but as a counterbalancing disadvantage, the 
popular sympathy was by no means so deeply 
stirred as in the earlier contest, and there 
was a powerful party which persisted in re- 
garding this as a war, not of the nation, but 
of a faction which had put a halter round the 
neck of the President and dragged him into 
the declaration of hostilities against his better 
judgment and almost against his will. 

There was, it is true, throughout tlie country, 
a very wide-spread indignation against the 
conduct of England. The right of search 
claimed and exercised by the captains of Brit- 
ish men-of-war, who stopped American vessels 
upon the high seas, and took from their crews 
any sailors whom they chose to consider British 
seamen, was highly exasperating to American 
pride; and the efforts of England to restrain 
American commerce with France during the 
Napoleonic wars, touched the pocket, as well 
as the pride of the new nation. The British 
exactions and harassments, culminating in the 
163 



DOLLY MADISON 

famous Orders in Council, at length roused 
so hot an opposition, that the government of 
the United States was drawn on to a declara- 
tion of war, and the people took up the war-cry 
of " Free trade and sailors' rights 1 " 

But the government had enemies within its 
borders as well as without. The Federalists, 
smarting under their years of defeat, now saw 
their opportunity to attack their political oppo- 
nents. The war was called " Madison's War." 
It was assailed as unwise, unnecessary, and ill- 
timed. In short, all the floods of Federalist 
bitterness were let loose on poor Madison's 
devoted head, and Mrs. Madison must often 
have been tempted to exclaim with the unfor- 
tunate French queen : " Why do they hate us 
so?" 

Defeat and victory alike afforded occasion for 
attacks on the administration. On the receipt 
of the news of Hull's disgraceful surrender at 
Detroit, the papers were furious, not only at 
Hull's treachery and cowardice, but at the 
incompetence of Madison, Eustis, and Dear- 
born. On the announcement of the splendid 
victories gained in the fights between the 
Wasp and the Frolic; the Hornet and the 
Peacock : the captures of the Alert the Guer- 
ri^re and Macedonian, the enemies of Madison 
hurrahed for American seamanship and valor, 
151 



WAR CLOUDS 

and cursed the fortune of such men in being 
governed by a set of forcible feebles, like Madi- 
son and his cabinet. 

The persistency with which the opposition 
press belittled victories and exaggerated de- 
feats, attributed evil motives and maligned 
character, went beyond even the days in Jef- 
ferson's administration, when in his wrath the 
President declared that nothing could be be- 
lieved that was found in the pages of a news- 
paper, since truth itself became suspicious from 
such a polluted vehicle. " The man," he said, 
" who never looks into a newspaper is better 
informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as 
he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than 
he whose mind is filled with falsehood and 
errors." 

Through all this strife which raged almost 
as hotly within as without the borders of the 
country, Mrs. Madison proved herself a true 
helpmeet to her anxious and harassed hus- 
band. Bearing herself with her wonted equa- 
nimity, she relieved him as far as possible from 
all the social burdens which weigh heavily upon 
the time and strength of a busy man, espe- 
cially of one with so little reserve of strength 
as Madison. Her doors were open to men of 
all parties and shades of opinion, and within 
her walls all animosities were dropped, or at 
155 



DOLLY MADISON 

least held in abeyance. For the days of defeat 
she had a steady and cheerful courage which 
inspired the doubtful with the assurance of 
ultimate success, and at the news of victory her 
face was an illumination. 

After the capture of the Macedonian, Lieu- 
tenant Hamilton, son of Paul Hamilton, Sec- 
retary of the Navy, was sent on to Washington 
bearing the flag of the conquered vessel as a 
trophy. On his arrival at the city he was in- 
formed that a brilliant naval ball was being 
held at Tomlinson's Hotel in celebration of the 
victories over the Alert and the Guerriere. 
Lieutenant Hamilton hastened to the scene of 
festivities, where he found the President, the 
officers of the cabinet, and other distinguished 
guests making merry in the ball-room which 
was decorated with the flags of the two con- 
quered vessels. Hamilton entered amid such 
an excitement that it nearly raised a panic, 
bearing a third, which, as the legend runs, 
he laid with great ceremony at the feet of Mrs. 
Madison. 

A modern historian strives to rob us of this 
pretty story of the flag laid at Mrs. Madison's 
feet and to fling it into the dust-heap of false- 
hood together with Tell's apple and Wash- 
ington's hatchet ; but my belief that this, or 
something very much like it, did take place is 

156 



WAR CLOUDS 

strong, and is confirmed by an odd little b/t of 
circumstantial evidence which is to be founcf 
in a letter from a lady of the period, full of 
gossip and incident and speaking very freely 
of the leaders of Washington society. This 
writer declares that almost all the ladies, in- 
cluding Mrs. Monroe (who being a grandmother 
should be willing to grow old), make free use 
of rouge and pearl-powder : " Mrs. Madison," 
she adds, " is said to rouge ; but not evident 
to my eyes, and I do not think it is true, as I 
am well assured I saw her color come and go 
at the naval ball when the Macedonian flag 
was presented to her by young Hamilton." Such 
testimony as this is not to be gainsaid. 

The scene of the ball made a deep impres- 
sion on all present. A few days later " The 
War," a New York journal, published the 
following account, written by an eye-witness. 

Washington, Dec. 10*^, 1812. 
The news of the third brilliant Naval victory 
was received in this city through the medium of 
private letters, on the evening of Tuesday last, and 
having been announced by an extra from the office 
of the National Intelligencer, was hailed with the 
most lively demonstrations of joy. The city was 
generall}^, and in some parts of it brilliantly, 
illuminated, as soon as the day shut in. It so 
happene that the very evening of its arrival had 
157 



DOLLY MADISON 

bepru previously selected for ^A Naval Ball,' in 
compliment to the officers of the Navy generally, 
and particularly to Captain Stewart, in acknow- 
ledgment of his politeness to our citizens on a 
recent occasion.^ A large and very respectable 
company assembled. The scene was graced by the 
presence of nearly all the beautj'- and fashion of our 
City. All was joy and gayety, such as could scarcely 
admit of augmentation. And yet it was destined 
to be increased. About nine o'clock a rumor was 
spread through the assembly that Lieutenant 
Hamilton, the son of the Secretary of the Navy, 
had reached the house, the bearer of the colors of 
the Macedonian and despatches from Commodore 
Decatur. The gentlemen crowded down to meet 
him. He was received with loud cheers and es- 
corted to the festive hall, where awaited him the 
fond embrace of a father, mother, and sisters. 
It was a scene easier felt than described. The 
room in which the company had assembled had 
been previously decorated with the trophies of 
naval victory. The colors of the Guerriere and 
the Alert displayed on the walls roused the proud 
feelings of patriotism, and had revived in every 

1 This "recent occasion" was a grand dinner given by 
Captain Stewart on board the Constellation, which lay in 
the Potomac, off Washington. The ship was gaily decorated 
with flags and bunting, belles and beaux danced beneath an 
awning of red, white, and blue, and at the upper end of the 
quarter deck Mrs. Madison sat surrounded by the most distin- 
guished guests. Her son, Payne Todd, was spoken of as the 
courtliest of all the cavaliers present. 
168 



WAR CLOUDS 

mind the recollection of the bravery which won 
them. The flag of the Macedonian alone was 
wanting to complete the group. It was produced 
and borne into the hall by Captains Hull and 
Stewart, and others of our brave seamen, amid the 
loud exclamations of the company, and greeted with 
national music from the band. 

These brilliant triumphs of American arms 
compelled enthusiasm even from the opposition 
faction, and from the beginning the administra- 
tion had had the cordial support of some of 
the ablest journals in the country. The Muse 
too had been roused, inspired by patriotic 
fervor ; and many were the metrical composi- 
tions (a strict regard for truth forbids me to 
call them poems) which appeared in the corners 
of the daily papers. A writer signing himself 
" Zephri," was one of the most frequent and 
enthusiastic contributors. One of his effusions 
written for the '' Columbian " was so popular as 
to be copied in various journals. To our jaded 
generation which is unwilling to accept 
sincerity of aim and natural emotion in lieu 
of correct figures of speech, it may seem to 
lack something, but it evidently fired the hearts 
of Zephri's contemporaries. 

In one of the many stanzas whose number 
scarce suffices to express his swelling emotion, 
he asks : — 

159 



DOLLY MADISON 

" Is there one — a milky heart 

Curdling at the thought of death; 
Shrinking from a valiant part 
To prolong a puny breath ? " 

If any one is to be found confessing to so 
ignominious an inward condition, "the coward 
slave " is bidden to retire, with the express un- 
derstanding, however, that he forfeits forever 
all right and title to beauty's smile, and that 
he consents to fill a righteously despised grave. 
One can fancy the thrilling effect of the verse 
as recited by the school-boy with appropriate 
gestures, and how it stirred the hearts which 
were not " milky " to due contempt for those 
that were. 

At the time of the appearance of these lines, 
a mob in Baltimore was striving to apply their 
principles practically by compelling the retire- 
ment of the editors of a paper called the " Fed- 
eral Republican " which had been vehement in 
denouncing the war. The disgraceful attack 
upon these editors and their friends (among 
them "Light Horse Harry" Lee), who were 
defending the liberty of the press with their 
lives, ended in a wholesale, brutal murder in 
which nine men were beaten down by butch- 
ers' clubs, and left mutilated on the steps of 
the jail whither they had been taken for protec- 
tion. Instantly the country was in an uproar. 
160 



WAR CLOUDS 

Baltimore received the sobriquet of '' Mob- 
Town," and the rioters were spoken of as 
"Madison's Mob." 

Thus, amid war without and dissension within, 
the first term of the President's administration 
drew to a close. The opposition was so vio- 
lent that it seemed quite likely that the gov- 
ernment of the country would pass to other 
hands. There is good reason for believing 
that Mrs. Madison's popularity, if it did not 
save the administration, at least formed an im- 
portant factor in securing the re-election of 
her husband. Her tact poured oil upon the 
troubled waters of political life, and the little 
attentions to the wives of disaffected politi- 
cians, which her good nature led her to offer, 
were not without their influence. There was 
much jarring in the cabinet itself, and here, too, 
Mrs. Madison smoothed and softened and 
quieted, as far as in her lay, all jealousies and 
disaffections. 

Washington Irving, who was again at the 
capital in the winter of 1812-13, wrote to 
James Renwick, " Mrs. Madison has been much 
indisposed, and at last Wednesday's drawing- 
room Mrs. Gallatin presided in her place." 
He describes Mrs. Gallatin as the most stylish 
woman at the levees, and dressed with more 
" splendor than any other of the noblesse." 

11 161 



DOLLY MADISON 

" I was not present," he adds, " but those who 
were assure me that she filled Mrs. Madison's 
chair to a miracle." When we recall that it 
was only the year before this that the relations 
of the President and the Secretary of the Trea- 
sury had been so strained that Gallatin had 
tendered the resignation of his portfolio, one 
reads between the lines a suggestion that Dolly 
Madison's indispositions were put to a good 
use, and that she was fully alive to the im- 
portant part played by small things in large 
affairs. 

It is not without a smile, too, that we read of 
the pleasure with which young Mrs. Seaton, wife 
of the chief of that influential journal, the " Na- 
tional Intelligencer," records the attentions 
paid her by the mistress of the White House. 
At the first levee in the fall of 1812, she looked 
on from a distance. " William " (her hus- 
band) was much solicited to attend, but pre- 
ferred remaining at home with his wife, who 
had not yet been presented to " Her Majesty," 
and did not think it etiquette to appear till 
that ceremony had been performed. Mrs. 
Madison, however, inquired graciously for her 
of a relative who was present, and shortly 
after she and her husband were bidden to a 
formal dinner at the White House. 

The party, beside the Seatons, consisted of the 

162 



WAR CLOUDS 

Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, the 
Minister to England, Mr. Russell, Mr. Richard 
Cutts, old General Yan Ness and his family, 
General Smith and his daughter from New 
York, the Magruders, Colonel Goodwyn and 
daughter, William R. King (then in Congress, 
subsequently elected vice-president on the 
ticket with Pierce), and Washington Irving. 
These, with one or two foreigners, Mr. and 
Mrs. Madison, the secretary, Mr. Coles, and 
their son, Payne Todd, made up the company. 

Mrs. Seaton gives a very graphic account of 
the occasion. " William and I," she says ; 
" repaired to the palace between three and four 
o'clock, our carriage setting us down after 
the first comers and before the last. It is 
customary on whatever occasion to advance 
to the upper end of the room, pay your obei- 
sance to Mrs. Madison, courtesy to His High- 
ness, and take a seat, and after this ceremony 
being at liberty to speak to acquaintances, etc. 
Mrs. Madison very handsomely came to me 
and led me nearest the fire, introduced Mrs. 
Magruder, and sat down politely between us, 
talking on familiar subjects, by her own ease 
and manners making her guests feel at 
home. Mr. King came to our side sans cere- 
monie, and gaily chatted with us till dinner 
was announced. 

163 



DOLLY MADISON 

"Mrs. Magruder by privilege of age was 
entitled to the right hand of her hostess, and I, 
in virtue of being a stranger, to the next seat ; 
Mr. Russell to her left, the President's secretary 
at the foot of the table, the President in the 
middle, which relieves him from the trouble of 
serving guests, drinking wine, etc." 

The dinner is described as very fine, particu- 
larly the wines, which were much discussed 
when the cloth was removed. The dessert with 
its ice-creams, preserves, and macaroons was 
followed by fruit, nuts, and raisins, and then 
candles were brought in and the ladies left the 
table. 

To beguile the period of suspended animation 
before the gentlemen joined them in the draw- 
ing-room, Mrs. Madison persuaded Mrs. Seaton 
to play a waltz upon the grand piano, while she 
instructed Miss Smith in a new step. At length 
the gentlemen strolled in, and then all the 
party adjourned to the tea-room, and here the 
talk wandered from Shakespeare to the musical 
glasses, always led by Mrs. Madison. The 
young guest bursts out at last into irrepressible 
enthusiasm : " I could describe the dignified 
appearance of Mrs. Madison, but I could not do 
her justice. It is not her form ; it is not her face. 
It is the woman altogether whom I should wish 
you to see. She wears a crimson cap that almost 
164 



WAR CLOUDS 

hides her forehead, but which becomes her 
extremely, and reminded one of a crown from 
its brilliant appearance contrasted with the 
white satin folds and her jet-black curls ; but 
her demeanor is so removed from the hauteur 
generally attendant on royalty that your fancy 
can carry the resemblance no further.'* 

Does any one doubt that " William " went 
home more convinced than ever of the jus- 
tice of the war and the wisdom of Madison's 
policy, and that the " National Intelligencer " 
spread far and wide the opinion that the man 
for the next presidency was already found, 
and that James Madison must be his own 
successor ? 

On New Year's day, 1813, the White House 
stood open to all the world, and even the dis- 
affected called to offer greetings to the nation's, 
chief. There was a dense crowd, and the noise 
was so great that it almost extinguished the 
music of the Marine Band, who were stationed 
in the ante-room, puffing, blowing, and thump- 
ing in the vain effort to make themselves heard 
above the babel of human voices. 

Mrs. Madison was queenly, in her rose-colored 
satin robe trimmed with ermine, with her tur- 
ban fastened by a crescent whence towered white 
ostrich plumes which marked her wherever she 
walked. The President was lost from time to 
165 



DOLLY MADISON 

time in the throng; but his wife's plumes 
towered like the emblem of Navarre. 

The blinds were open, and in the midst of the 
reception the attention of the com pan j was 
attracted toward an object so brilliant in the 
winter sunlight that it looked like a golden 
ball carried along on gilded wings, but when it 
stopped at the foot of the steps it proved to be 
only the coach of the French Minister, and the 
wings but a pair of footmen gorgeous in tinsel- 
braid, glittering swords, and chapeaux bras. 

Thus brilliantly opened the year of 1813, 
and March fulfilled the promise of January. 
James Madison was again declared President 
of the United States, and Mistress Dolly 
entered upon four more years of public life. 
Their satisfaction in this second triumph was 
not unalloyed. Both husband and wife were 
beginning to tire of all the noise and show 
and glitter. Those who saw the President on 
this fourth of March (and they included every 
one who could walk or was the happy possessor 
of a carriage, or could pay twenty-five cents for 
hack hire) pronounced him thinner and paler 
than at his first inauguration. His voice was 
so low and weak that the words of his address 
could scarcely be heard, and at his reception 
the incessant bowing, which in those days took 
the place of the plebeian hand-shaking of our 
166 



\ 



WAR CLOUDS 

time, fatigued him almost beyond endurance ; 
but his wife was as brilliant, tactful, and helpful 
as ever, and still mindful of her husband's inter- 
ests, begged Mrs. Seaton to assist at her levee 
and '* not to desert the standard altogether." 

A miniature exquisitely painted on ivory 
sets forth the Mrs. Madison of those days, as 
a still blooming dame with a turban of some 
soft white stuff, showing, however, a wider mar- 
gin of coal-black curls than the Quakeress cap 
of old. Ear-drops (she had a pair, of amethyst, 
hung in chains in shape of a letter M) and a neck- 
lace and the bunch of rose-buds set jauntily in 
the front of the turban give an effect of full- 
dress, as befits the gown of velvet cut low 
over the shoulders, with short, puffed sleeves, 
from beneath which fall full undersleeves of 
white. A filmy neckerchief of lace, worn rather 
off than over the shoulders, completes the pic- 
turesque and altogether pleasing costume. 



167 



IX 

THE BURNING OF WASHINGTON 

It was in the summer of 1814 that the 
most dramatic event of Mrs. Madison's life 
occurred. The war had been dragging its slow 
length along with varying fortunes, when too 
late the nation awoke to find its capital threat- 
ened by a powerful army at its very gates. 
Washington at this time was a straggling 
village, numbering about eight thousand in- 
habitants. It depended for its protection upon 
a beggarly guard of five hundred regulars and 
an untrained force of militia, supported by a 
few gunboats. All at once, these raw troops 
found themselves opposed to a British army 
containing a thousand marines and thirty-five 
hundred veterans who had seen service under 
Wellington. 

The government from Madison down had 
shown itself fatuously weak in its utter failure 
to prepare for the emergency. In July General 
Winder had written : " The door of Washing- 
ton is wide open and can not be shut with the 
few troops under my command." Despite the 

168 



THE BURNING OF WASHINGTON 

warning neither he nor any one else made any 
adequate effort to shut it, and wide open it 
still stood on that fatal d^y in August when the 
British fleet appeared in Chesapeake Bay off 
the mouth of the Potomac. 

Great was the consternation when a post- 
rider dashed into Washington bearing the 
news. At once the wildest excitement prevailed. 
The President and his cabinet made futile 
plans which resulted only in a bewildering 
series of contradictory orders despatched to 
General Winder, and a general requisition on 
the Governors of neighboring States for militia 
to protect the capital. The citizens of Wash- 
ington held a public meeting and raised a force 
of volunteer troops which made haste to aid 
General Winder in erecting defensive works 
at Bladensburg, a village in Maryland, situ- 
ated about four miles from Washington, — its 
doorstep, as it were, — where the first stand 
against the invaders was finally made. At 
last, the conviction was forced home upon the 
most sanguine that the British admiral made 
no idle threat when he swore he would dine 
in Washington, and make his bow in Mrs. 
Madison's drawing-room. 

Sunday, August twenty-first, 1814, was any- 
thing but a day of rest for the dwellers at the 
capital. Washington presented a miniature of 
169 



DOLLY MADISON 

the scene at Brussels before Waterloo. Carts 
loaded with public documents and private valu- 
ables rattled over the long bridge, leading across 
the Potomac to the Virginia shore. Men and 
women scurried about seeking safe hiding- 
places for silver and jewels. On Monday the 
banks sent away all their specie. 

Meanwhile the British fleet had passed by 
the Potomac and sailed up the Patuxent River, 
landing their troops at Benedict, a point in 
Maryland about thirty miles to the southeast 
of Washington. Thence the British forces were 
marching calmly along the shady high-roads in 
great enjoyment and meeting not the slightest 
opposition. On the third day of its uninter- 
rupted advance, the British column fell in with 
a flotilla of gunboats, which, instead of making 
any resistance, were blown up by order of 
Armstrong, the Secretary of War. Barney, 
the commander of the destroyed flotilla, hast- 
ened to add his five hundred men to the number 
then in Winder's camp, which presented a 
scene of noise and confusion more like a race- 
course or a fair than the gathering of an army 
about to fight for the national capital. 

At nightfall on Monday, the twenty-second of 
August, Madison arrived, accompanied by Arm- 
strong, the Secretary of War, Jones, the Secre- 
tary of the Navy, and Attorney-General Rush. 
170 



THE BURNING OF WASHINGTON 

So timid, doubtful, and hesitating a chief as 
the President could not add to the confidence 
or effectiveness of either officers or troops. 
General Winder was little better either as a 
leader or a strategist, for while he massed his 
troops at the Navy Yard, he left the Bladens- 
burg road unprotected, and nothing was done 
towards defending it till news reached him that 
the British General Ross was actually march- 
ing by that path straight on to Washington. 
Now, indeed, camp was broken, and in two 
hours, says McMaster, " a motley throng made 
up of militia, regulars, volunteers, sailors, 
generals, secretaries and the President, were 
racing across country to Bladensburg." 

The noon of Wednesday, the twenty -fourth, 
saw the beginning of the battle, which raged 
hotly till four o'clock. Madison's unfitness for 
even the nominal position of Commander-in- 
Chief was painfully apparent throughout. One 
who was near him reports that he spent his 
time writing pencilled notes to his wife ; and 
finally, about two o'clock, in the midst of the 
battle, he turned to his secretaries, saying: 
'' Come, Armstrong, come, Monroe, let us go, 
and leave it to the commanding general ! " 

Much sport was afterwards made of this 
retreat of the President and his cabinet from 
the field of battle, and later from Washington. 
171 



DOLLY MADISON 

A New York paper said that should some 
Walter Scott in the next century arise and 
write a poem on the Battle of Bladensburg, he 
might fittingly conclude with the lines : — 

" Fly, Monroe, fly ! Run, Armstrong, run ! 
Were the last words of Madison." 

The Washington to which Madison now bent 
his steps was a panic-stricken village, filled 
with women, children, and servants, almost 
wholly deserted of men, for every able-bodied 
musket-bearer was at the front. Throughout 
the afternoon the booming of cannon had 
echoed from the battlefield at Bladensburg, 
only four miles distant, and none could say how 
soon the foe would have traversed that short 
distance, or how soon the British guns would 
be turned on the buildings of Washington. 

Two very vivid pictures of the life at the 
capital in those trying days, have been left us 
by the journal of Mrs. Madison, and by the 
reminiscences of Mr. Madison's faithful slave, 
Paul Jennings, a man of unusual intelligence 
and education, who afterwards bought his free- 
dom and remained for many years a respectable 
citizen of Washington. 

Mrs. Madison's journal was kept in the form 
of a letter to her sister, and reflects, as her 
writing always does, every varying mood of 
hope and fear. It bears date — 

172 



THE BURNING OF WASHINGTON 

Tuesday, August 23, 1814. 
Dear Sister, — My husband left me yesterday 
morning to join General Winder. He inquired 
anxiously whether I had courage and firmness to 
remain in the Presidential house till his return, 
and on my assurance that I had no fear but for him 
and the success of our army, he left me, beseeching 
me to take care of myself and of the cabinet papers, 
public and private. I have since received two dis- 
patches from him, written with a pencil. The last 
is alarming, because he desires I should be ready 
at a moment's warning to enter my carriage and 
leave the city; that the enemy seemed stronger 
than had been reported, and that it might happen 
that they would reach the city with intention to 
destroy it. ... I am accordingly ready. I have 
pressed as many cabinet papers into trunks as to 
fill one carriage. Our private property must be 
sacrificed, as it is impossible to procure wagons for 
its transportation. I am determined not to go my- 
self until I see Mr. Madison safe, and he can accom- 
pany me, as I hear of much hostility towards him. 
. . . Disaffection stalks around us. . . . My friends 
are all gone; even Colonel C, with his hundred 
men, who were stationed as a guard in this inclos- 
ure. French John [a faithful domestic], with his 
usual activity and resolution, ofiers to spike the 
cannon at the gate, and to lay a train of powder 
which would blow up the British should they enter 
the houso. To the last proposition I positively 
object, without being able, however, to make him 
173 



DOLLY MADISON 

understand why all advantages in war may not be 
taken. 

Wednesday morning, twelve o'clock. Since sun- 
rise I have been turning my spy-glass in every 
direction, and watching with unwearied anxiety, 
hoping to discern the approach of my dear husband 
and his friends; but alas! I can descry only groups 
of military wandering in all directions, as if there 
was a lack of arms or spirit to fight for their own 
firesides ! 

Three o'clock. Will you believe it, my sister, 
we have had a battle or skirmish near Bladensburg, 
and I am still here within sound of the cannon ! 
Mr. Madison comes not. May God protect him ! 
Two messengers, covered with dust, come to bid me 
fly; but I wait for him. ... At this late hour a 
wagon has been procured; I have had it filled with 
the plate and most valuable portable articles belong- 
ing to the house. Whether it will reach its des- 
tination, the Bank of Maryland, or fall into the 
hands of British soldiery, events must determine. 

Our kind friend, Mr. Carroll, has come to 
hasten my departure, and is in a very bad humor 
with me, because I insist on waiting until the 
large picture of General Washington is secured, 
and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall. 
This process was found too tedious for these per- 
ilous moments ; I have ordered the frame to be 
broken and the canvas taken out. It is doue, and 
the precious portrait is placed in the hands of two 
gentlemen of ^New York for saf e-keepir g. And 
. ' 174 



THE BURNING OF WASHINGTON 

now, dear sister, I must leave this house, or the 
retreating army will make me a prisoner in it, by 
filling up the road I am directed to take. When I 
shall again write to you, or where I shall be to- 
morrow, I cannot tell. 

Much has been said touching the episode of 
the saving of Washington's portrait to which 
Mrs. Madison alludes in this letter, and a 
melodramatic tradition represents her as 
snatching a carving-knife from the table and 
cutting the canvas from the frame. This is 
absurd, as the portrait hung so high that a 
step-ladder was required to reach it. The 
truth is that on Tuesday afternoon Mr. George 
Washington Parke Custis, being anxious about 
the safety of the picture, came over from his 
home at Arlington to inquire what could be 
done to secure its preservation. Mrs. Madison 
still, perhaps, doubting the pressing danger, 
assured him that it should be taken care of, 
and even in the distraction of these last ago- 
nizingly anxious moments, she was true to the 
promise she had made. John Siousa, known 
as "French John," the door-keeper at the 
White House, and Magrau, the gardener, broke 
the frame on the dining-room wall as their 
mistress directed, secured the treasured por- 
trait, and despatched it to a house near George- 
town in a wagon, in which were also stored 
175 



DOLLY MADISON 

some great silver urns and other valuables of 
large bulk. 

This task accomplished, Mrs. Madison turned 
her thoughts to the method of that flight 
which her husband's pencilled notes urged 
upon her as immediately and urgently neces- 
sary. How unexpected the emergency was 
may be inferred from the fact that a dinner- 
party was planned for the same afternoon at 
the White House, and the wines and viands 
were actually demolished by the British officers 
on their arrival. 

Paul Jennings says : — 

'' On that very morning Gen. Armstrong assured 
Mrs. Madison there was no danger. The President, 
with Gen. Armstrong, Gen. Winder, Col. Monroe, 
et ah, rode out on horseback to Bladensburg to see 
how things looked. Mrs. Madison ordered dinner to 
be ready at three o'clock, as usual. I set the table 
myself, and brought up the ale, cider, and wine and 
placed them in the coolers, as all the Cabinet and 
several military gentlemen and strangers were ex- 
pected. While waiting, at just about three, as 
Sukey, the house-servant, was lolling out of a 
chamber window, James Smith, a colored man who 
had accompanied Mr. Madison to Bladensburg, gal- 
loped up to the house, waving his hat, and cried 
out : ^ Clear out, clear out ! General Armstrong has 
ordered a retreat. ' 

176 



THE BURNING OF WASHINGTON 

*' All then was confusion. Mrs. Madison ordered 
her carriage, and passing through the dining-room, 
caught up what she could crowd into her old-fash- 
ioned reticule, and then jumped into the chariot 
with her servant-girl, Sukey, and Daniel Carrol, 
who took charge of them. Jo. Bolin drove them 
over to Georgetown heights. The British were ex- 
pected in a few minutes. Mr. Cutts, her brother- 
in-law, sent me to a stable on 14th St. for his 
carriage. People were running in every direction. 
John Freeman [the colored butler] drove off in the 
coachee with his wife, child, and servant; also a 
feather-bed lashed on behind the coachee, which was 
all the furniture saved. — 

*^Mrs. Madison slept that night at Mrs. Love's, 
two or thre.e miles over the river. After leaving 
that place, she called in at a house and went up- 
stairs. The lady of the house, learning who she 
was, became furious, and went to the stairs and 
screamed out: ^ Mrs. Madison, if that's you, come 
down and go out! Your husband has got mhie 

out fighting, and d you you sha'n't stay in 

my house. So get out.' Mrs. Madison com- 
plied, and went to Mrs. Minor's, a few miles 
further on." 

The opposition journals who made merry 
over Madison's retreat found equal food for 
mirth in his wife's hasty departure from the 
White House, and a parody of John Gilpin set 
forth her supposed address to her husband : — 

12 177 



DOLLY MADISON 

*' Sister Cutts and Cutts and I 
And Cutts's children three 
Will fill the coach, — and you must ride 
On horseback after we." 

It was easy in the light of after events to 
see the fun of that broad farce, that comedy of 
errors in which the armies of the two bravest 
nations on earth were scurrying away from 
each other, — the head of the American people 
hurrying away from one hiding-place to 
another, while the British admiral retreated 
from the enemy's capital, as Cockburn did on 
the next night, in dismay at a thunder-storm. 
But at the time there was little enough of 
comedy in the situation to any of those who 
shared its anxiety and its perils real or fan- 
cied. It must be said that none of the promi- 
nent figures appear to so much advantage 
under the trying circumstances as Mrs. Mad- 
ison. Had her husband shown as much cool- 
ness and good judgment, a disgraceful episode 
might have been omitted from our national 
history. 

A few hours after the President and his wife 
had quitted the capital Ross and Cockburn, 
the British commanders, entered the city at 
the head of their troops, and at once pro- 
ceeded to wreak their vengeance by setting fire 
to the Capitol. The old story represented 
178 



I 



THE BURNING OF WASHINGTON 

Cockburn as jumping upon the Speaker's chair 
in the House of Representatives, and shouting, 
"Shall this harbor of Yankee democracy be 
burned ? All for it will say ' Ay. ' " And at 
the chorus of "Ays," the torch was applied. 
It is a picturesque story, but unfortunately 
without foundation. 

The flames at the Capitol, however, mounted 
as high as though they had been set by formal 
vote, and by their lurid light the British 
soldiers marched along the two miles of Penn- 
sylvania Avenue that lay between the burning 
building and the President's mansion. At 
the White House, much to their satisfaction, 
the officers found the bountiful feast set by 
Paul Jennings awaiting them. Of this they 
partook freely before devoting the house to the 
same fate which had overtaken the Capitol. 
The rooms having been ransacked, and the 
wine-cellar robbed of thousands of dollars' 
worth of wine, the furniture was piled together 
in the drawing-room and fired by a coal secured 
from a neighboring tavern. The next build- 
ings to fall victims were the United States 
Treasury and the office of the " National In- 
telligencer," the editor of which had been 
specially severe in denouncing Cockburn. The 
fires lighted up the midnight sky till the red 
glare could be seen for many miles. 
179 



DOLLY MADISON 

On Wednesday afternoon Mrs. Madison, after 
having seen her husband for a short time, had 
parted from him with many misgivings for his 
safety, he making his way to the Virginia 
shore, and she to the house of a friend in 
Georgetown. Before daybreak on Thursday 
Mrs. Madison and her little train left this 
house, which had sheltered them for the night, 
and set forth on the road to meet her hus- 
band at the place which he had appointed. 
She was met with all the insult which Paul 
Jennings describes, and was likely to spend 
the night without a shelter, but at the approach 
of a thunder-storm the hard heart of the inn- 
keeper softened, and Mrs. Madison was allowed 
the poor privilege of sheltering her head under 
this rude roof. Here at length on Thursday 
night Mr. Madison appeared pale and tired, 
but safe, and then nothing could disturb his 
wife further. Despite cold and hunger and 
danger and insult she was happy. 

Even this comfort, however, was soon shaken, 
for scarcely had the President fallen into a 
sleep of utter exhaustion, when a breathless 
messenger came flying up to the tavern with 
the warning that the British had discovered 
his place of concealment and were upon his 
track. Once more he was compelled to en- 
counter the pitiless, pelting storm, and to take 
180 



THE BURNING OF WASHINGTON 

refuge in a roughly-built hut in the forest, 
where he spent the remainder of this wretched 
night. 

On Friday morning Mrs. Madison, having, 
according to a promise to her husband, adopted 
a disguise, started forth in a little wagon 
under the guard of a civilian and a single 
soldier. But on their way they were met by 
the joyful news that the British, awe-struck 
by the fearful tornado which had followed 
their conflagration, and affrighted by vague 
rumors of renewed attacks by the Americans, 
had withdrawn from Washington. 

It must have been at this point that Mrs. 
Madison received the letter from her husband 
which is to be found in a fragmentary condi- 
tion among the Madison Papers. The date is 
torn off, and the writing begins abruptly : — 

I cannot yet learn what has been the result. 
Should the port have been taken, the British ships 
with their barges will be able to throw the city 
again into alarm, and you may be again compelled 
to retire from it, which I find would have a disagree- 
able effect. Should the Ships have failed in their 

attack, you can not return too soon. [Torn] • 

keep Freeman till the question is decided, and then 
lose no time in sending him to You. In the mean 
time it will be best for you to remain in your pres- 
ent quarters. I wrote you yesterday morning by 
181 



DOLLY MADISON 

express, from Brookeville, and at the same time to 
the Sec?", of the Navy, supposing you all to be to- 
gether. It is possible the separation may have 
prevented your receiving the letter. I returned to 
the city yesterday, in company with Mr. Monroe, 
Mr. Rush, &c., and have summoned the Heads of 
Dept. to meet here without delay. Inclosed is a 
letter from Mr. Cutts. My next will be by Free- 
man, & as soon as I can decide the points of your 
coming on. 

Ever & most affy. yours, 

J. M. 

With lightened hearts the fugitives turned 
about and began their journey of twenty miles 
or more back to the capital. When they reached 
the long bridge at the Virginia shore of the 
Potomac they found it impassable, having 
been burned at either end. At first they were 
denied passage in the only boat which plied 
across the river, till at length they suc- 
ceeded in making themselves known to the 
officer in charge, when the party was ferried 
over, and Mrs. Madison entered Washington 
to find the house which she had left only 
forty-eight hours before, a smoking ruin. Her 
sister Anna's house became her temporary 
home, and here the President joined her not 
to separate from her again. 

Before a fortnight had passed the burning 
182 



THE BURNING OF WASHINGTON 

of Washington was avenged by the death of 
the invading commander, the repulse of the 
English troops at Baltimore, the British defeat 
at Plattsburg, and the surrender of the fleet 
on Lake Champlain. In the English Parlia- 
ment the burning of the American capital was 
stigmatized as " of any enterprise recorded in 
the annals of war, the one which most exas- 
perated the people and least weakened the 
government. " 



'^^ 



PEACE 

" Peace ! Peace ! Peace ! " The bells rang it 
from the church-steeples ; the cannon boomed 
it from the embrasures of the forts; the 
candles blazed it out into the night from every 
window-pane of cottage and mansion. After 
nearly three years of war the United States 
and Great Britain were to be friends once 
more. No sooner had the sloop-of-war " Fav- 
orite," bearing Mr. Carroll the peace-messen- 
ger, touched the wharf at New York than the 
good news spread like wild-fire all over the 
country, and everywhere was greeted with 
tumultuous rejoicings. 

At Newport the military paraded, and Thames 
Street was a blaze of color, wherein banners 
of red, white, and blue were blended with the 
red flags of England. The village of Pough- 
keepsie was illuminated from end to end. 
Every alley and lane in Baltimore showed 
candles in the windows. Boston and New 
York and Philadelphia were one blaze of bon- 

?84 



PEACE 

fires and illuminations. But it was at Wash- 
ington, where the greatest gloom and anxiety 
had prevailed, that the wildest reaction of joy 
now displayed itself. National salutes were 
fired. The public buildings were draped with 
flags, and at night the general illumination 
and the glare of rockets lighted up the sky 
which six months before had reflected the 
flames of the Capitol and the White House. 
That White House was still a charred and 
blackened ruin not to be restored till Dolly 
Madison had ceased to be entitled to do its 
honors. 

The tidings of the peace found her estab- 
lished at the Tayloe Mansion, generally called 
from its peculiar form " The Octagon," situated 
at the corner of Eighteenth Street and New 
York Avenue, and commanding a charming 
view of the Potomac and the heights of Ar- 
lington. This house was, of course, the very 
centre of all the joyous excitement. 

One who shared the rejoicings within its 
walls thus describes the delight with which 
the news of peace was received there: — 

^^Late in the afternoon came thundering down 

Pennsylvania Avenue a coach and four foaming 

steeds, in which was the bearer of the good news. 

Cheers followed the carriage as it sped on its way 

186 



DOLLY MADISON 

to the residence of the President. Soon after night- 
fall, members of Congress and others deeply inter- 
ested in the event presented themselves at the 
President's house, the doors of which stood open. 
When the writer of this entered the drawing-room 
at about eight o'clock, it was crowded to its full 
capacity, Mrs. Madison (the President being with 
the Cabinet) doing the honors of the occasion. And 
what a happy scene it was! Among the members 
present were gentlemen of opposite politics, but 
lately arrayed against one another in continual 
conflict and fierce debate, now with elated spirits 
thanking God, and with softened hearts cordially 
felicitating one another upon the joyful intelli- 
gence which (should the terms of the treaty prove 
acceptable) should re-establish peace. But the 
most conspicuous object in the room, the observed 
of all observers, was Mrs. Madison herself, then in 
the meridian of life and queenly beauty. She was 
in her person, for the moment, the representative 
of the feelings of him who was in grave consulta- 
tion with his official advisers. No one could doubt, 
who beheld the radiance of joy which lighted up 
her countenance and diffused its beams around, 
that all uncertainty was at an end, and that the 
government of the country had, in very truth (to 
use an expression of Mr. Adams on a very different 
occasion), * passed from gloom to glory.' With a 
grace all her own, to her visitors she reciprocated 
heartfelt congratulations upon the glorious and 
happy change in the aspect of public affairs; dis- 
186 



PEACE 

pensing with liberal hand to every individual in 
the large assembly the proverbial hospitalities of 
that house/' 

Not even the servants were forgotten in the 
general merry-making. Miss Sally Coles, a 
cousin of Mrs. Madison's, who afterward 
married Andrew Stevenson, Minister to 
Russia, rushed to the head of the basement 
stairs, shouting, " Peace ! peace ! " John 
Freeman, the butler, was ordered to serve out 
wine freely in the servants' hall. Paul Jen- 
nings played the " President's March " on his 
fiddle. French John drank enough to render 
him unfit for active service for several days, 
and all the woes and hardships of the past 
were forgotten. 

A few evenings later a grand concert was 
given by "Seignior Pucci," under the patron- 
age of the prominent society leaders of Wash- 
ington, " on the much admired and fashionable 
King David's pedal harp," on which were per- 
formed a series of selections adapted to the 
state of the public mind, and including "Jack- 
son's March," " Decatur's Favorite," and a med- 
ley of national airs of England and America. 

The poets, who, from their corner of the 
daily and weekly journals, had been hurling 
literary bombs at Great Britain and her 
187 



DOLLY MADISON 

" minions " for months, now of a sudden 
tuned their verses to piping notes of peace, 
and began to assure their brethren across the 
water that thej did not think so badly of them 
after all. 

One of these bards writes jovially : — 

" Heave to, my old ship-mate ! let 's capsize a can 
To the peace that they 've made there among 'em at Ghent ; 
Tho' we care not for war, yet there is not a man 
Who won't drink to the Peace, till his rhino is spent ! 

" Then here 's to us both ! We 've fair wind and fair weather. 
Let the star-spangled banner in triumph be furled ; 
We will splice the old cross and our bunting together 
And ride every wave and defy all the world." 

Amid the universal joy, the official blunders 
of the President were forgotten, if not for- 
given, and he found himself restored to all his 
old-time popularity, which endured even when 
the Treaty of Ghent was made public, and 
found less gratifying than had at first been 
hoped. But more truly than ever was it said 
that Dolly Madison was the most popular 
person in the United States. She was beloved 
by high and low alike. The soldiers, march- 
ing gladly home from their long enlistment, 
stopped to cheer before her house. Her recep- 
tions were more brilliant than those of old 
days in the White House, and the gayeties of 

188 



PEACE 

the " Peace Winter " were recalled for years 
in the annals of Washington. 

" The Octagon " still stands among the his- 
toric houses of the capital, a symbol of the 
past, which the tide of fashion has swept by 
and left stranded like its neighbor, the Van 
Ness mansion, hemmed in by business blocks 
and public buildings. Its walls are dilapi- 
dated, its rooms bare of furniture, yet they 
possess a dignity and quaint elegance and 
refinement which make the modern splendors 
of the West End seem somewhat garish and 
newly rich. 

The house, which, by the way, is endeared 
to the popular heart by the rumor of being 
"haunted," was built by Colonel Tayloe, of 
Mount Airy, Virginia, before the end of the 
last century. It is of brick. Its pillared 
portico, adorned with delicate traceries, leads 
to a circular vestibule, from which opens 
a second hall in which a white staircase 
winds upward through three stories. On 
the right of this hall is the drawing-room, 
before whose quaintly carved wooden mantel 
Mrs. Madison was accustomed to stand to 
receive her guests, the gowned justices, the 
foreigners gorgeous in court costume, and the 
brilliantly uniformed officers. To the left is 
the dining-room opening directly across from 
189 



DOLLY MADISON 

the parlor. On the floor above in the front 
of the house over the vestibule is a charming 
circular boudoir, which suggests the pouting 
beauties of Watteau, sconces and spinets, blue- 
ribboned crooks and flowery banks whereon 
painted shepherdesses recline in impossible 
attitudes. But instead of all this the walls, 
hung with maps and engineers* drawings, 
looked down on the grave faces of Madison 
and his cabinet, who here met habitually, and 
here also signed the famous Treaty of Ghent. 

From the bedroom beside the boudoir I 
looked out upon the tree-tops and across the 
wide-stretching Potomac, and fancied how 
often Mrs. Madison must have looked over the 
same shining water to the same blue heights 
beyond, where lay the beloved Virginia toward 
which her thoughts turned longingly even in 
these happy days which crowned the ending of 
her official life. Before they had done with 
Washington life, however, the Madisons made 
still another move from the Tayloe mansion 
to the two houses forming the corner of the 
Seven Buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue, 
where all the brilliant hospitalities of "The 
Octagon " were continued and even surpassed. 

Here the President entertained General 
Andrew Jackson and his wife. The hero of 
New Orleans became at once the chief lion of 
190 



PEACE 

Washington society, and many dinners were 
given in his honor at the President's house. 
The most prominent people of Washington 
made haste to pay him respect, and his stay at 
the capital was marked by a series of balls 
and levees, at which the General appeared 
somewhat awkward and ill at ease ; but the 
rough exterior and uncouth manners of Jack- 
son comported better with the soldier just 
from the frontier than afterward with the 
President of the United States. 

In many respects, the manners of those days 
were not those of our time, — better, perhaps, 
in some directions, worse in others. It is told, 
for instance, of Mrs. Madison .that, meeting 
Henry Clay at one of these receptions, she 
offered him her snuff-box, made of platinum 
and delicately tinted lava ; and that when she 
herself had taken a pinch and applied it to her 
nostrils, she drew out a large bandanna hand- 
kerchief, remarking that she kept that for 
"rough work," while the dainty wisp of lawn 
and lace, wherewith she afterward dusted the 
tip of her pretty nose, was her "polisher." 
Other times, other customs ; but none the less, 
Dolly Madison was a very great lady as well 
as a very great belle ; and Sir Charles Bagot, 
who came over after the peace as Special 
Ambassador from Great Britain, and who was 

191 



DOLLY MADISON 

well acquainted with the court dames of 
Europe, pronounced her "every inch a queen." 

The fashions of that early time seem as 
strange to us as the manners. In the " Ladies* 
Weekly Museum," published in New York, in 
1817, and claiming to be "a Polite Reposi- 
tory of Amusement and Instruction, Being 
an Assemblage of Whatever can interest the 
mind or exalt the character of the American 
Fair," I read, between the columns of mild 
poetry and still milder philosophy, a descrip- 
tion of an astonishing walking costume, con- 
sisting of a "Round dress of fine cambric, 
under a pelisse of emerald-green reps sarsnet, 
ornamented and faced with flutings of green 
and white satin, elegantly finished by British 
silk trimmings, and waist girt by a rich silk 
cordon of the same manufacture with full 
tassels ; bonnet of green curled silk, the crown 
and ornaments of white satin and emerald- 
green to correspond with the pelisse; green 
satin half-boots and Limerick gloves; Berlin 
ridicule of green and white satin." 

The design of this chaste and tasteful emer- 
ald costume originated in England, but the 
French toilettes of the time are even gayer. 
A correspondent who professes to write from 
Paris, but who shows himself, or herself, 
somewhat uncertain as to the spelling of the 

192 



PEACE 

Parisian palace, writes : " Nearly all the hats 
lately exhibited in the purlieus of the Thuil- 
leries are of crape. Some are green, with 
puffing in the front, while others are of citron 
color, but ornamented with lilies and yellow 
wall-flowers. The large Nepolitan hats are of 
blended utrite and lilac, or entirely the latter 
color, with much white embroidery, and a few 
grapes and lilies intermingled, about three 
of each imitation. Some young fashionables 
sport scarlet under-waistcoats with a black 
upper; but white upper waistcoats with a 
scarlet under one are most frequently 
exhibited." 

Mrs. Madison herself, daughter of the 
Quakers as she was, shared the universal 
love of gay colors and brilliant effects. Per- 
chance the enforced plainness of her youth 
had rather stimulated the passion for dress, 
and the gorgeousness of her later costumes 
marked a protest and a re-action. The Presi- 
dent, in contrast with his wife, in her fine 
raiment and finer spirits, must have looked 
doubly sober. 

Sullivan, whose Familiar Letters on Public 
Characters throw much light on the times, 
says of him, that at the close of his second 
term he made the impression of "a care- 
worn man, and seemed by his face to have 
13 193 



DOLLY MADISON 

attained to a more advanced age than was 
the fact. He had a calm expression, a pene- 
trating blue eye, and looked like a think- 
ing man. He was dressed in black, bald on 
the top of his head, powdered, of rather pro- 
tuberant person in front, small lower limbs, 
slow and grave of speech." 

Although he had escaped with surprisingly 
little loss of prestige from the consequences of 
his mistakes, he must have felt that his 
administration had not been all he had hoped 
to make it when he entered upon the office. 
The enthusiasm of the nation over the peace 
had subsided from its first warmth to chill 
when it was found that the treaty was silent 
on all the chief points which the government 
had declared necessary to the well-being and 
even the self-respect of the United States. 
The toasts of "Peace and Plenty," which had 
been drunk at every dinner-table in the win- 
ter of 1815, grew less and less frequent, and 
men began to talk gravely of taxes and tariff 
laws. When first the " Madison's Night Caps " 
were lifted from the masts, shouts greeted 
their removal ; the tar barrels were made 
into bonfires along the wharves, and all the 
world cried out that the end of all hardships 
for merchants and shipbuilders was at hand; 
but before the year was over, the merchants 
194 



PEACE 

found Great Britain again shutting American 
ships out of the West Indian trade, and break- 
ing down American manufactures till Ameri- 
can ship-building became a thing of the past, 
and American merchants found ruin staring 
them in the face. 

During the last two years of his administra- 
tion Madison strove diligently to heal the 
wounds which the war had inflicted on the 
country's credit. How great was the need of 
a reformation of the national banking system 
may be inferred from the experience of a man, 
who, at the close of the war of 1812, carried 
to a Pennsylvania bank a roll of bills issued 
by that institution. He demanded gold or 
silver in exchange for them, but was told that 
the bank declined to pay gold or silver. 
"Then," said he, "give me bills of the United 
States bank." "We have not any," answered 
the cashier. " Ah ! " said the applicant, " then 
I will take bills on any bank in New England. 
None of those ? Then kindly pay me in the 
best counterfeit hills you have.'''' 

All this was changed before Madison went 
out of office, and a national bank was cre- 
ated on a sound basis. The war too had not 
been without its benefits, almost worth its 
cost. It had done more than twenty years of 
peace to unite and solidify the nation. It had 

195 



DOLLY MADISON 

produced the national anthem of the Star- 
Spangled Banner, which, if we may believe 
Fletcher of Saltoun, was a more important 
matter than all the legislation of Congress, 
and it had bequeathed a cluster of sajings I 
which went at once to the popular heart, and 
are likely long to survive in the popular 
memory, — " Don't give up the ship ; " " Our 
country right or wrong ; " " We have met the 
enemy and they are ours ; " and to these might 
be added the epigrams of the Abbe Correa, 
Minister to this country from Portugal, in 
1816. He it was who called Washington "the 
City of Magnificent Distances," and said that 
"Providence takes care of idiots, drunkards, 
and the United States." 

With the spring of 1817 Madison's term 
came to an end, and as the fourth of March, 
which was to see Monroe installed as his suc- 
cessor, drew near, the Madisons began to 
prepare for departure with mingled feelings 
of relief and regret. Montpellier promised 
rest and refreshment after long struggle and 
turmoil; but the intimate friendships of six- 
teen years were now to be severed, and a fare- 
well must be said by James Madison and his 
wife to the scenes which had witnessed the 
best and the worst that life could offer them. 
Such a farewell is not uttered without pro- 
196 



PEACE 

found emotion, and their feeling was most 
earnestly reciprocated by those whom they left 
behind, who had for so long a time walked and 
worked by their side. 

A letter written at this moment by Judge 
William Johnson of the United States Supreme 
Court is touching from its evident genuineness 
of feeling peeping through all the stiff verbiage 
of the day like a rose in an Italian garden : 

Washington, 1817. 

I am this moment on the eve of leaving Wash- 
ington, and shall leave it without a parting inter- 
view with one whom I must be indulged in the 
liberty of comprising among the most respected and 
most cherished of my friends. But you, madam, 
cannot mistake the feelings which dictate to me this 
mode of making you an humble tender of a most 
affectionate adieu. 

You are now about to enter upon the enjoyment 
of the most enviable state which can fall to the lot 
of mankind — to carry with you to your retirement 
the blessings of all who ever knew you. Think 
not, madam, that I address to you the language of 
flattery. It is what no one but yourself would hes- 
itate at conceding. And be assured that all who 
have ever enjoyed the honor of your acquaintance, 
will long remember that polite condescension which 
never failed to encourage the diffident, that suavity 
of manner which tempted the morose or thoughtful 
197 



DOLLY MADISON 

to be cheerful, or that benevolence of aspect which 
suffered no one to turn from you without an emotion 
of gratitude. 

Permit, madam, one who has shared his due 
proportion of your attentions to make you a sincere 
tender of the most heartfelt gratitude and respect, 
and to wish that you may long enjoj^ every bless- 
ing that Heaven dispenses to the meritorious. 

Do me the favor to tender to Mr. Madison 
also a respectful adieu, and a cordial and sincerely 
friendly one to your son. 

Very respectfully, 

William Johnson, Jr. 

Another elaborate tribute of respect to the 
ex-President and his wife was paid by the 
elegant Mr. Dawson, who wrote : — 

Washington, March 13th, 1817. 
It is with the hope that I may be permitted, 
without the imputation of vanit}^, to convey in this 
manner to M^ & M" Madison, upon their retiring 
to the pleasing scenes of private life, my most sin- 
cere wishes that they may both long enjoy every 
felicity which this world can possibly afford, and 
to beg they will have th-e goodness to be assured 
that although I have not on particular occasions 
mingled with the numbers who, by personal attend- 
ance, might be supposed in that way to testify 
their respect, yet, so far as an obscure individ- 
198 



PEACE 

ual may presume, I cannot yield an iota of that 
respect, even to the most assiduous. 

I have the honor to be, with every sentiment of 
respect, M^ & M" Madison's very obed* humble 
Serv*, 

Joshua Dawson. 

Accompanied thus by compliments and kind 
wishes and loving thoughts, Mrs. Madison 
took leave of the city of Washington. Her 
memory did not pass away with her presence 
from the capital. In the year following her 
departure from Washington the "Portfolio," 
edited by "Oliver Oldschool," offered its 
readers a number " embellished " with a por- 
trait of Mrs. Madison, and opening with a 
sketch (an exceedingly sketchy sketch) of her 
life. In this, as in Judge Johnson's letter, 
we find the ornate periods, the long words 
and formal compliments wherewith our an- 
cestors loved to decorate their writing, yet 
its tribute is genuine and its estimate not 
unjust. 

It begins in stately fashion, using the 
editorial plural : — 

"We had the pleasure of seeing her some years 
ago, on the occasion of a splendid fete, which was 
given by his excellency, M. Daschkoff, the minister 
from Russia, in honour of the natal day of his sover- 
eign. We remarked the ease with which she glided 
199 



DOLLY MADISON 

into the stream of conversation and accommodated 
herself to its endless variety. In the art of con- 
versation she is said to he distinguished, and it he- 
came evident, in the course of the evening, that the 
gladness which pla^^ed in the countenances of those 
whom she approached was inspired hy something 
more than mere respect. We fear that our artists 
have not presented an adequate representation of 
the features of this lady. [They certainly have 
not, for the portrait represents a thick-nosed, hare- 
necked woman, with an artificial smile, and an ex- 
pression of eye closely approaching a wink, only 
recognizahle as Mrs. Madison from the inevitable 
turban and the little curls about the forehead.] 

''We have not forgotten how admirably the air 
of authority was softened by the smile of gayety; 
and it is pleasing to recall a certain expression that 
must have been created by the happiest of all dis- 
positions, — a wish to please, and a willingness to 
be pleased. This, indeed, is to be truly good and 
really great. Like a summer's sun she rose in 
our political horizon, gloriously, and she sunk, 
benignly." 



200 



XI 

LIFE AT MONTPELLIER 

The old post-road from Washington to the 
South leads through a series of shabby little 
towns, over a rolling country, now stretching 
its bridges over runs and rivers, and anon 
winding through fields of grain and tobacco 
hedged in by the zig-zag Virginia rail fences. 
Wherever the ground peeps through its green 
blanket it shows its characteristic tinge of 
deep red, — a cloud of fire in drought, a slough 
of despond in wet weather. 

The village of Orange, which is the cluster 
of houses nearest to Montpellier, lies about 
eighty-four miles to the southwest of Wash- 
ington. The distance which the railroad train 
now covers in two or three hours required 
as many days to traverse by coach in olden 
times; even longer, probably, in that early 
spring weather after the fourth of March, 
1817, when Mr. and Mrs. Madison journeyed 
over it, and when the roads were heavy. The 
first stage of the journey is tedious and some- 

201 



DOLLY MADISON 

what desolate. The country looks as though 
nature had abandoned it to man, and man had 
not yet accepted the trust; but as the road 
advances southward, the foothills of the moun- 
tains rise encouragingly before the eyes, the 
country begins to roll itself into green billows, 
and in the distance, like stately sentinels, loom 
the cones of the Blue Ridge. 

From Orange the road to Montpellier winds 
somewhat sharply uphill, through groves of 
thick-growing pines, till at last it halts be- 
fore an old-fashioned gateway, whose posts are 
topped with the always graceful urn. Beyond 
lies still another barred gate, and then the 
road sweeps with a wide tranquil curve to the 
foot of the steps which lead up to the broad, 
pillared portico. 

The Montpellier homestead is a mansion. 
Before the eye has had time to take measures, 
it is assured of this fact. As in all true 
architecture, the proportions are so just, the 
lines so simple, the scheme so dignified, that 
the house needs no vast size to lend it impres- 
siveness, yet even by the crude test of the 
foot-rule, Montpellier is by no means insig- 
nificant. Its length is a hundred and fifty 
feet and its depth thirty-two feet. Part of the 
length lies in the one-storied wings, which, 
set back a little from the main building, ex- 

202 



LIFE AT MONTPELLtER 

tend some twenty feet on either side, their flat 
roofs jDrotected by a wooden balustrade. 

As the front door swings open, one looks 
across the shallow hall which runs along the 
front of the house, connecting the wings, and if 
the opposite door of the wide saloon beyond 
chance also to stand ajar, a glimpse of lawn 
bounded by trees and hedges catches the 
vision. The square saloon within is shady 
and cool in the greatest heats of summer, so 
sheltered is it by the porches on either hand. 

On the lawn a few rods to the west of the 
house stands a charming little classic temple, 
" contrived a double debt to pay, " the upper 
part serving for a summer-house, as its roof 
shuts out the sunlight, which is still of a 
southern intensity, even when filtered through 
the leafy screen of overhanging branches, 
while beneath its floor is stored the ice which 
supplies the table of the mansion. From be- 
tween the delicate pillars which support its 
dome the idler from his lounging chair can 
see the lovely curves of the hills scumbled to 
dimness here and there with clouds and dis- 
tant mist. It is a spot for dreaming rather 
than doing, and Madison must have found 
himself compelled to turn his back upon the 
too beguiling prospect before he could bend 
his mind to study or to work. 
203 



DOLLY MADISON 

At the rear of the house lies the garden 
which Mrs. Madison made her especial care. 
The path which leads to it is bordered with 
thick-set hedges of box which have now grown 
to a height in some places above a man's head. 
These hedges shut out the sight of the garden 
till one is close upon it, when he sees it 
lying spread out at his feet. It is said that 
Madison planned the horse-shoe terraces in 
imitation of the galleries of the Hall of Eep- 
resentatives at Washington, and that the 
parallelogram which lies below represents the 
floor of that house. 

The chief gardener was a Frenchman named 
Beazee, and under Mrs. Madison's superin- 
tendence he planted, tended, watered, and 
gathered not only the flowers which were 
brought indoors to brighten and perfume the 
square saloon, but also the fruits and more 
prosaic vegetables which contributed to the 
well-being of the household and the stranger 
within its gates. An important part such a 
garden played in the management of an estate 
four miles distant from the nearest market, 
where guests, expected and unexpected, arrived 
in great numbers at all times and seasons. 

No wonder Dolly Madison expended much 
energy and interest upon its domain. She 
was always an early riser, and often while her 
204 



LIFE AT MONTPELLIER 

visitors were drowsing in the slothful delights 
of the stolen morning nap, Mrs. Madison was 
walking along the paths between the trim box- 
borders of her beloved garden, her apron tied 
over her dress, and her wide-brimmed bonnet 
shielding her eyes from the morning sun, 
beside her some little black boy carrying the 
basket into which fell the ripe fruit her hands 
gathered, or the tall growing roses as they 
were severed from their stems by her shears, 
and the pink oleander blossoms which were 
her favorite flowers, and which she loved to 
pluck and pin upon the dresses of her young 
girl visitors. 

It is a striking comment upon Mrs. 
Madison's character that she could find hap- 
piness and contentment amid such simple sur- 
roundings and occupations. A vainer woman 
would have been miserable at the withdrawal 
of the adulation which had followed her for 
a score of years. A weaker woman would 
have sighed for the excitements of town life. 
Dolly Madison neither sighed nor moped, but 
set about living in these changed surroundings 
with a steady serenity, and the cheerfulness of 
a healthy mind conscious of resources within 
itself, and capable of setting its own tasks and 
making its own pleasures. The chief duty as 
well as the chief pleasure of her life at Mont- 
205 



DOLLY MADISON 

pellier in these days lay in the care of her hus- 
band's mother, now advanced far beyond the 
limits of three score and ten, yet still, in spite 
of her burden of over ninety years, of clear 
intelligence and winning personality. 

The "old wing," as it was called, being the 
one to the right of the door on entering, was 
set apart wholly for the use of Madison's 
mother. One who saw her in those surround- 
ings says: — 

^' All the appointments of her dwelling bespoke 
the olden day; dark and cumbrous old carved fur- 
niture, carpets of which the modern loom has for- 
gotten the patterns, implements that looked as if 
Tubal Cain has designed them; upholstery quaint- 
ly, if not queerly, venerable. In short, all the 
objects about her were in keeping with her person 
and attire. You would have said that they and she 
had sat to Sir Godfrey Kneller for a family picture, 
or that you yourself had suddenly been transported 
back to Addison's time, and were peeping by priv- 
ilege into the most secluded parts of Sir Roger de 
Coverley's mansion. 

*' Indeed, to confirm the illusion, you would 
probably find her reading the ^ Spectator ' in the 
large imprint and rich binding of its own period, 
or thumbing (as our degenerated misses do a novel 
of the Dickens or Sue School) the leaves of Pope, 
Swift, or Steele. . . . Such books, then and when her 
old eyes grew weary, the almost equally antiquated 
206 



LIFE AT MONTPELLIER 

occupation of knitting, habitually filled up the 
hours of this old-time lady: the hours we mean 
when pain or feebleness remitted her for occupa- 
tion. As to those sadder moments of suffering, or 
of that sinking of the bodily powers which presses 
at times upon far-advanced age, she bore them with 
the cheerfulest patience, and even treated them as 
almost compensated by the constant delight of the 
affections which the pious care of her children gave 
her all the while. Nothing could exceed their 
watchfulness to serve her, soothe her, minister to 
her such enjoyments as may be made by lovingness 
to linger around even the last decline of a kindly 
and well-spent life. 

^'In all such offices her son bore as much part as 
his own frail health and the lesser aptitude of men 
for tending the sick permitted; but no daughter 
ever exceeded in the tender and assiduous arts of 
alleviation of suffering the attentions which Mrs. 
Madison gave to her husband^s infirm parent. It 
was a part, however, of her system of happiness for 
the ancient lady at once to shut out from her what 
she could ill sustain, — the bustle of that large estab- 
lishment and the gayeties of the more miscellaneous 
guests that often thronged it, and yet to bring to 
her, in special favor towards them, such visitors as 
could give her pleasure and break the monotony of 
her general seclusion. These were sometimes old 
and valued friends ; sometimes their hopeful off- 
spring; and, occasionally, personages of such note 
as made her curious to see them. All such she 
207 



DOLLY MADISON 

received, according to what they were, with that 
antique cordiality or amenity which belonged to the 
fine old days of good breeding, of which she was a 
genuine specimen. '^ 

Eleanor Conway Madison (generally spoken 
of as "Nellie Madison," as her daughter-in- 
law was called Dolly), at ninety, was a charm- 
ing picture of serene age, occupied, cheerful, 
and content, living in her old room, among 
her old furniture, waited upon by gray-haired 
servants, — a typical " Madam Placid. " 

Mrs. Margaret Smith, a dear friend of Dolly 
Madison, and a frequent guest at Montpellier, 
was also a frequent visitor in the old-fashioned 
retreat wherein Madison's mother held sway, 
and where she was always sure of a hearty 
welcome. "I asked her, wrote Mrs. Smith, 
after one of these visits, how she passed her 
time. ' I am never at a loss,' she replied. 
' This and these,' touching her knitting and 
her books, ' keep me always busy. Look at 
my fingers, and you will perceive that I have 
not been idle ' (the tips of the fingers were 
indeed polished by the knitting-needles), ' and 
my eyes, thanks be to God, have not failed 
me yet, and I read most part of the day. But 
in other respects I am feeble and helpless, 
and owe everything to her^ (pointing to her 
daughter-in-law;. ' She is mi/ mother now.' '* 

203 



LIFE AT MONTPELLIER 

The care and affection which James 
Madison's wife bestowed upon his mother was 
no more than an adequate return for the 
interest which he had always shown in her 
family circle. Her mother had shared his 
home. Her sister Lucy had lived at the 
White House during her widowhood, and Anna 
Payne had grown up under his care, and con- 
tinued to live under his roof till her marriage 
with Mr. Cutts. To the Cutts children he 
continued the same uniform kindness, and 
with how much solicitude he watched their 
development may be inferred from the long 
letters which he took time, in the midst of all 
the pressure of business, quite as great at 
Montpellier as in Washington, to write. In 
one of these letters to young Richard Cutts, he 
says : — 

''Your letter, my dear Richard, gave me much 
pleasure, as it shews that you love your studies, 
which you would not do if you did not profit by 
them. Go on, my good boy, and you will find that 
you have chosen the best road to a happy life, be- 
cause a useful one, the more happy because it will 
add to the happiness of your parents and of all who 
love you and are anxious to see you desiring to be 
loved. When I was at an age which will soon be 
yours, a book fell into my hands which I read, as I 
believe, with peculiar advantage. I have always 
14 209 



DOLLY MADISON 

thought it the best that had been written for cher- 
ishing in young minds a desire for improvement, a 
taste for learning, and a lively sense of the duties, 
the virtues, and the proprieties of life. 

''The work I speak of is 'The Spectator,' well 
known by that title. It had several authors, at the 
head of them Mr. Addison, whose papers are marked 
at the bottom of each one of the letters in the name 
of the muse, 'Clio.' Thej^ will reward you for a 
second reading after reading them along with the 
others. 

"Addison was of the first rank among the fine 
writers of the age, and has given a definition of 
what he showed himself to be an example. ' Fine 
writing,' he says, 'consists of sentiments that are 
natural without being obvious,' to which adding 
the remark of Swift, another celebrated author of 
the same period, making a good style to consist of 
'proper words in their proper places,' a definition 
is formed which will merit your recollection, when 
you become qualified, as I hope you will one day be, 
to employ your pen for the benefit of others, and 
for your own reputation. I send you a copy of the 
'Spectator,' that it may be at hand when the time 
arrives for making use of it; and as a token, also, 
of the good wishes of your affectionate Uncle." 

It is deeply to be regretted that Madison, 
who did so much for his nephews, was unable 
to exert his influence nearer home, and to 
impress his own worthy characteristics upon 

210 



LIFE AT MONTPELLIER 

his graceless step-son. From the beginning 
he treated Payne Todd with all the gentleness 
and forbearance of a father, and with perhaps 
less sternness than he would have shown 
towards a son of his own, — a sternness which 
young Todd richly deserved, and which might 
have greatly improved him. 

It would be unjust to ascribe to maternal 
influence the difference between a John Quincy 
Adams and a John Payne Todd, yet one can- 
not avoid the impression that had Dolly 
Madison established the combined firmness of 
discipline and closeness of companionship 
which marked the intercourse of Abigail Adams 
with her children, she might have escaped 
many of the deplorable consequences growing 
out of her son's conduct and misconduct. 

From the time of his coming to Montpellier 
as a tiny boy, Payne Todd showed himself at 
once weak and wilful. As he grew older he 
was sent to Baltimore to a Roman Catholic 
school. He was a handsome lad with an 
attractive face and something of his mother's 
charm of manner, but both charm and beauty 
were early destroyed by dissipation, and his 
spendthrift habits foretold the anxieties sure 
to befall his mother. 

In 1813, at the age of twenty-one, he was 
sent abroad, and accompanied the ambassa- 
211 



DOLLY MADLSON 

dors despatched to negotiate the treaty at 
Ghent in 1814. Albert Gallatin was one of 
these ambassadors, and his wife, who was a 
warm friend and admirer of Mrs. Madison, 
wrote home at intervals of Payne's enjoying 
his trip and meeting many attentions abroad. 
No doubt it pleased the young man mightily to 
be called the "Prince of America," and to 
dance with the Russian princesses within the 
sacred space reserved for royalty, while Henry 
Clay and John Quincy Adams looked on from 
the more plebeian gallery. Yet the wisdom of 
the expedition seems more than doubtful, and 
it is certain that the young man received more 
harm than good from his European wanderings. 
When at last he returned to America, 
instead of settling down to work as his mother 
had fondly hoped, he idled away his time, first 
in one city, then in another, and his own money 
having been soon consumed, he began to make 
constant applications to his mother for funds, 
and to contract debts which were paid over 
and over by his step-father. His mother 
ardently desired him to marry ; but he showed 
no sign of any such intention ; though he did 
have the grace to fall honestly and respect- 
ably in love with the beautiful Ann Cole, a 
Williamsburg belle, who was hard-hearted or 
far-sighted enough to decline his suit, — a 

212 



LIFE AT MONTPELLIER 

fact for which Dolly Madison, womanlike, bore 
a little resentment, and counselled her son to 
remember that there were plenty of other 
charming girls in the world, and he need not 
turn his back upon the sex because one proved 
unkind. He preferred, however, to drown his 
sorrow, if indeed his nature was capable of 
any real grief, in the wine-cup, and continued 
to amuse himself with other kindred spirits 
around the gaming-table. 

His mother's letters to him throughout this 
period are pitiful. She tells him that every 
one is inquiring for him, and wondering that 
he should stay away so long, and she (alas !) is 
ashamed to tell the length of his absence. 
His gambling debts are spoken of as busi- 
ness embarrassments, concerning which she 
counsels him to consult with his father and 
herself, and begs him to come home. The 
perpetual burden of every letter is, "Come 
home ! " Yet, when he did come there could 
be little sympathy between the unreformed 
prodigal and the simple, monotonously temper- 
ate and virtuous household at Montpellier ; and 
on the whole his mother's heart must have 
been lighter when he took his departure, and 
she was not forced by daily reminders to 
realize what an utter wreck he had made of 
his life. 

213 



DOLLY MADISON 

It was well, perhaps, that Mrs. Madison had 
so many duties to occupy her time that she 
had little leisure to dwell upon this disap= 
pointment, the greatest grief of her middle 
life until the overshadowing sorrow of her 
husband's death. Her days were very full. 
In addition to the care of the garden all the 
superintendence of the household devolved 
upon her. To her it fell to distribute the pro- 
visions and to turn the key, as was necessary, 
upon all the store-rooms; to attend to the 
cutting out of the wearing apparel for all 
the servants; to visit the negro quarters; in 
the event of a birth among the slaves, to super- 
intend the care of mother and child ; to listen 
to complaints ; to treat symptoms with the 
simple medicaments usually kept at hand in 
every southern plantation household; and 
finally when all these matters were attended 
to, the chief business of the day, the entertain- 
ment of guests, was to be seriously under- 
taken. 

In the rare intervals when Montpellier was 
without visitors, Mrs. Madison spent her days 
in efforts to spare her husband's eyes by act- 
ing as his amanuensis in his correspondence, 
and by reading aloud from the books which 
strewed the tables, chairs, and floor of his 
library "thick as leaves in Vallombrosa." 
214 



LIFE AT MONTPELLIER 

Mrs. Madison's own sight was far from strong, 
and in her later years her eyes gave her much 
trouble. In 1833 Madison writes to Mr. Ben- 
jamin Waterhouse, acknowledging the receipt 
of a book. " Although the state of my eyes, " 
he says, "permits me to read but little, and 
my rheumatic fingers abhor the pen, I did not 
resist the attraction of your literary present, 
and I drop you a line to thank you for it. 
Mrs. Madison's eyes being in the same state 
with mine, we found it convenient to read in 
a sort of partnership, and you may consider 
her as a partner also in the thanks for it 
Should you enlarge a new edition as you hint, 
by the introduction of a Pocahontas or two 
among the dramatis personce, the redness of 
the skin would not in her eyes impair the 
merit it covers." 

This letter, which is surely a model of 
urbane and non-committal acknowledgment of 
the "presentation copy," shows that Mrs. 
Madison's sight was even then failing, and 
that her general health was also beginning 
to break appears from various paragraphs in 
her husband's letters. To Mrs. Margaret 
Smith he writes that Mrs. Madison has lately 
been seriously ill, but is now recovering. To 
Jefferson, with whom his intimacy never 
flagged, he often expresses anxiety about his 
215 



DOLLY MADISON 

wife's health, but Mrs. Madison's own letters 
are all so bright, so cheerful, and so overflow- 
ing with interest in others, that they give little 
hint of her physical limitations, and through 
her husband she is constantly sending affec- 
tionate words and gracious compliments and 
good wishes to his correspondents. To R. B. 
Lee, Madison writes: "Mrs. Madison desires 
to be remembered to Mrs. Lee, with an assur- 
ance of her continued affection and of the 
lively interest she feels in whatever may relate 
to the happiness of her early and highly valued 
friend." To Henry Clay: "Mrs. Madison 
charges me with affectionate regards to Mrs. 
Clay." To George Ticknor: "Mrs. Madison 
is greatly obliged by the portrait of the Hero 
of Liberty and Humanity so dear to us all;" 
and to Edward Livingston, who has sent a 
portrait of himself to his friends at Mont- 
pellier : " The promised bust will be received 
by Mrs. Madison w^ith pleasure, the greater 
as she knows I shall share it with her. It 
will be associated in the little group with the 
class which adds to other titles to commemo- 
rative distinction appeals to the feelings of 
private friendship." 

In looking through the voluminous files of 
the Madison Papers, I have made a partial list 
of the gifts to Mr. and Mrs. Madison which 

216 



LIFE AT MONTPELLIER 

are alluded to in their pages. It is a strange 
medley, and includes every variety of article, 
— busts and statues, portraits and paintings ; 
a chair from the Emperor of Morocco ; a set of 
china once the property of Marie Antoinette ; 
a pair of decanters made in America; a bag 
of white Sumatra peppers ; a box of lupinella- 
seed; grafts of tulip-trees and St. Germain 
pears; strawberry plants and Natchitoches 
snuff; a pair of Coke-Devon calves; merino 
sheep ; white mice, pheasants, and tiger-skins. 
Mrs. Randolph sends Madison her cookery- 
book, and, to make the honors even, Weems 
sends his Life of William Penn to Mrs. Madi- 
son, to whom also Solomon Southwick presents 
" a perfect set of the ' Christian Visitant. ' " 
A Frenchman sends a glass flute, his own 
invention, and a German makes a more sub- 
stantial offering of a case of hock. 

The list soon becomes tedious in length; 
but it serves to show how constantly and affec- 
tionately the Madisons were remembered, not 
only in their days of power, but in that period 
of seclusion when gifts carried a sense of true 
affection, and of that gratitude which was a 
genuine recognition of good offices in the past 
rather than " a lively sense of favors to come. '' 
The mere acknowledgment of all the offerings 
which came to Montpellier was a tax upon the 

217 



DOLLY MADISON 

time and strength of the Madisons, but it 
opened up charming new acquaintances and 
strengthened the old familiar ties. Bj cor- 
respondence such as theirs with all parts of 
Europe and America, the ex-President and his 
wife were held in touch with all the affairs 
moving in the outer world. All the news 
public and private drifted sooner or later to 
their door. Gossiping letters from the capital 
told of great things and small. The marriage 
of President Monroe's daughter, and the fes- 
tivities so rudely interrupted by the duel of 
Barron and Decatur, and the death of the 
latter, which threw the city into mourning ; of 
the various grand entertainments which marked 
the administration of Monroe, and later of 
John Quincy Adams, and the final culmina- 
tion of social excitement in the ball given by 
Mrs. Adams, eclipsing all foregoing festivities, 
and made notable by the enormous throng of 
people who crowded every corner and stood 
on chairs in order to get a glimpse of the 
people's hero, Andrew Jackson, — an occasion 
which inspired a poem of innumerable stan- 
zas, with the refrain : — 

" Mothers, daughters, 

Maids and Madams, — 
All are gone 
To Mrs. Adams." 
218 



LIFE AT MONTPELLIER 

The latest news of the literary world, as 
well as the social, drifted to the doors of 
Montpellier; but Mrs. Madison's life was too 
busy for much reading, even had her taste 
inclined in that direction, which it did not. 
She writes occasionally to a friend begging 
for some new novel, and complains of Cooper 
(fancy it !) as too melodramatic, and dealing 
in the horrible beyond the endurance of her 
nerves. On one occasion she contemplates a 
plunge into so serious a work as the Romance 
of History; but there is no record of her 
finishing it, and she returns The Oxonians, 
finding her mind too occupied with family 
anxieties to enjoy reading. 

In the main, despite all these anxieties, 
Dolly Madison's life at Montpellier during 
the nineteen years between her leaving Wash- 
ington in 1817 and her husband's death in 
1836, were full of sunshine, full of occupation, 
and overshadowed by fewer clouds of trouble 
and sorrow than darken the lot of most 
mortals. 



219 



XII 

VIRGINIA HOSPITALITY 

During the entire period of Madison's retire- 
ment until within a few months of his death, 
when illness compelled seclusion, the gates of 
Montpellier were never closed to friend or 
stranger. Visitors of every kind, impelled by 
every variety of motive, claimed entrance here, 
and had their claim allowed. Distinguished 
foreigners, such as Lafayette, Harriet Mar- 
tineau, and the Count D'Orsay, came to estab- 
lish or renew an acquaintance with the man 
whose fame as the "Father of the Constitu- 
tion " had travelled over Europe. Stanch 
Democrats came from all parts of the United 
States to pay their respects to Jefferson's 
greatest disciple ; and tourists to the Virginia 
Springs, whose road lay very near, were glad 
of the opportunity to satisfy their curiosity by 
a glimpse of the ex-President, and his no less 
famous wife. In addition to these visitors 
must be reckoned the host of political friends 
and acquaintances making semi-annually pil- 

220 



VIRGINIA HOSPITALITY 

grimages to Washington, the army of relatives 
on either side of the family and finally the 
neighbors who in summer weather drove over 
from their adjacent plantations to spend the 
day, arriving in the middle of the morning in 
order to give time for additional preparations 
for the midday dinner, and remaining till 
the coolness of the afternoon rendered the re- 
tm-n drive pleasant. 

It was a principle at Montpellier that every 
guest must be feasted, — " if a stranger, because 
strangers ought to be made to pass their time 
as agreeably as possible ; if a friend, because 
nothing can be too good for one's friends." 
A contemporary truly observed that where 
such a domestic policy prevailed there would 
seldom be a lack of guests. "Indeed," he 
says, "the condition is one hard to avoid, and 
so pleasant withal that we have known persons 
of wit and breeding to adopt it as their sole 
profession, and benevolently pass their lives 
in guarding their friends, one after another, 
from the distresses of a guestless mansion. " 

The dining-room of Montpellier was a rather 
large, square room in the new wing opposite 
the apartments of Madison's mother; but large 
as it was, its capacity was often taxed by the 
number of those who came to share its bounty ; 
and on special occasions, such as the Fourth 

221 



DOLLY MADISON 

of July, which was always a time of great 
hilarity at Montpellier as throughout the 
country, it was found necessary to set the 
tables out of doors. 

In a letter written to her sister Anna, in 
1820, Mrs. Madison says: — 

^^ Yesterday we bad ninety persons to dine with 
us at one table, fixed on the lawn, under a large 
arbor. The dinner was profuse and handsome, and 
the company very orderly. Many of your old ac- 
quaintances were here — among them the two Bar- 
bours. We had no ladies except Mother Madison, 
Mrs. Macon, and Nelly Willis. The day was cool 
and all pleasant. Half a dozen only staid all night, 
and are now about to depart. President Monroe's 
letter this morning announces the French Minister; 
we expect him this evening, or perhaps sooner, 
though he may not come until to-morrow; but I 
am less worried here with a hundred visitors tban 
with twenty-five in Washington, this summer es- 
pecially.'' 

The two Barbours alluded to in this letter 
were brothers, whose name is still preserved 
in the little town of Barboursville lying on the 
route of the Southern Railway three miles 
south of Montpellier. They were prominent 
men in Virginia, Philip becoming a judge, 
and James Governor of the State. John 
Randolph described the difference between 

222 



VIRGINIA HOSPITALITY 

them with his usual caustic wit, saying, " Phil 
aims at ahorse hair and splits it; James aims 
at a barn-door and misses it." Both were 
men of marked ability, however, and frequent 
visitors at Montpellier. 

But the most cherished and eagerly looked 
for of all the guests at Mrs. Madison's home 
were Jefferson, his daughter, Mrs. Randolph, 
and her family. With them there was no con- 
straint, no concealment, no effort, and in the 
return of these visits the Madisons found an 
occasional needed respite from their own 
duties of host and hostess. Monticello as 
well as Montpellier was sadly taxed with unin- 
vited guests, and Jefferson even more than 
Madison suffered from the irksome duties of 
giving time and strength to the entertaining 
of uncongenial and indifferent comers from all 
directions. 

Captain Bacon, the steward of Monticello, 
says that Jefferson was literally eaten out of 
house and home by his guests : — 

**They were there all times of the year; but 
about the middle of June the travel would com- 
mence from the lower part of the State to the 
Springs, and then there was a perfect throng of 
visitors. They travelled in their own carriages 
and came in gangs, the whole family with carriage 
and riding horses and servants, sometimes three or 
223 



DOLLY MADISON 

four sucli gangs at a time. We had thirty-six 
stalls for horses, and only used about ten of them 
for the stock we kept there. Very often all of the 
rest were full and I had to send horses off to an- 
other place. I have often sent a wagon-load of hay 
up to the stable, and the next morning there would 
not be enough left to make a bird's nest. I have 
killed a fine beef and it would be all eaten in a day 
or two.'' 

Bacon saw with alarm that this wholesale 
hospitality was making serious inroads upon 
the estate, and he strove to introduce various 
small economies. Unknown to his master, he 
ordered half rations given to visitors' horses, 
but Jefferson soon heard of the matter, and 
countermanded the order. The steward was 
in despair. His master, he says, knew that 
his income was being exceeded, but in his 
politeness he continued to bid all the world 
welcome, and to offer the best he could set be- 
fore them. Shrewd Captain Bacon, who played 
the part of Sancho Panza to Jefferson's Quix- 
ote, remarks : " They pretended to come out of 
respect and regard to him, but I think that 
the fact that they saved a tavern bill had a 
good deal to do with it, with a good many of 
them." 

That Jefferson and his family, however 
smiling a front they might present to the 

224 



VIRGINIA HOSPITALITY 

world, were often worn out with the arduous- 
ness of their social duties, appears very dis- 
tinctly in a couple of letters which passed 
between him and his daughter. Mrs. Ran- 
dolph writes: — 

**I was at Monticello one day before the ar- 
rival of any one, and one more day of interval 
between the departure of one family and the arrival 
of another; after which time I never had the pleas- 
ure of passing one sociable moment with you. 
Always in a crowd, taken from every useful and 
pleasing duty to be worried with a multiplicity of 
disagreeable ones, which the entertaining of such 
crowds of company subjects one to in the country. 
... I find myself every day becoming more averse 
to company." 

Her father replies with sincere sympathy : — 

''Nobody can ever have felt so severely as my- 
self the prostration of family society from the 
circumstance you mention. . . . But there is no 
remedy. The present manners and usages of our 
country are laws we cannot repeal. They are alter- 
ing by degrees, and you will live to see the hospi- 
tality of the country reduced to the visiting hours 
of the day, and the family left to tranquillity in 
the evening." 

Mrs. Madison never gave utterance to any 
sentiment as radical as these of Jefferson to 

15 225 



DOLLY MADISON 

his daughter ; but there appears from time to 
time in her letters a gentle weariness acknowl- 
edging that the play is excellent, yet " would 
it were done." Her husband chafed more 
under the restraint than she, casting longing 
looks at the closed door of his dear library, 
and then returning to the restraints imposed 
by civility and his duties as host. Yet with 
them both this mood was occasional, and varied 
by times of the keenest enjoyment in finding 
themselves surrounded by friends to whose 
enjoyment and amusement they were able to 
contribute so much. 

The mansion at Montpellier was admirably 
adapted to the hospitalities which it so 
bountifully offered. The rooms were large, 
with a certain air of nobleness, the furni- 
ture neither sparse nor huddled. Nothing 
seemed done for show, but everything for 
comfort. "You soon grew at your ease," 
says a visitor within its walls, "if at arriving 
you had been otherwise, for here was in its 
perfection that happiest part and surest test 
of good-breeding, — the power of at once put- 
ting every one at ease. The attentions not 
over- assiduous, not slack, but kept to a great 
degree out of sight, by making a body of thor- 
oughly-trained and most mannerly servants 
their ministrants, so that the hosts performed 

226 



VIRGINIA HOSPITALITY 

in person little but the higher rites of hospi- 
tality, and thus seemed to have no trouble and 
much pleasure in entertaining you. Accord- 
ingly there has seldom, even in the hilarious 
land of old Virginia, been a house kept, — 
especially by elderly people, — at which it was 
pleasanter to be a sojourner. They always 
made you glad to have come and sorry that 
you must go." 

This was indeed the essence of fine hospi- 
tality, and like the quality of mercy it blessed 
those that gave as well as those who received. 
To Madison it meant a constant polishing of 
the mind and manners which so soon grow 
rusty in complete inaction and seclusion, and 
to Mrs. Madison it supplied the lack of a 
liberal education, as well as of the advantages 
of travel. The world came to her who had 
otherwise never seen the world, for Dolly 
Madison's little journeyings were bounded by 
the strip of coast lying between New York 
and North Carolina. Of Europe she knew 
nothing, and her familiarity with her own 
country was limited to an acquaintance with 
three or four large towns and an experience 
of Virginia country-life. Yet, thanks to her 
wide and cosmopolitan acquaintance, she had 
become herself a cosmopolitan. 

The precise amount of pleasure or the 

227 



DOLLY MADISON 

reverse to be extracted from the exercise of 
such unlimited hospitality as prevailed at 
Montpellier is impossible to estimate, because 
it varied with the individual occasion, and the 
conclusion of the whole matter was well 
expressed by Madison when he said that some 
visits were taxes and others bounties. He 
was wont to smile, in his moderate, drily 
humorous fashion, over the occasional lack of 
congeniality between host and guests which 
made conversation difficult and sympathy 
impossible. He told in particular of a young 
Englishman visiting at Montpellier, whose 
passion was geology, concerning which Madison 
was as ignorant as he was indifferent. Much 
to his amusement, he saw his guest one morn- 
ing rushing toward him in a transport of 
enthusiasm, holding out a stone, which he 
almost thrust into Madison's face, crying out, 
" Graywacke, sir ! graywacke, graywacke ! " 

Among the visits which were reckoned as 
"bounties" at Montpellier few were recorded 
with more satisfaction than that received from 
Harriet Martineau, who, in the autumn of the 
year 1834, had come to America with the pur- 
pose of investigating for herself the existing 
condition of slavery in "the States." Mrs. 
Madison wrote at once inviting her to come to 
Montpellier, where she would have every op- 

228 



VIRGINIA HOSPITALITY 

portunity to study the question at short range, 
and Miss Martineau gladly accepted the invi- 
tation. Of this visit she gives a graphic and 
most enthusiastic description in her Retro- 
spect of Western Travel. 

She and her vivacious little friend and com- 
panion, Miss Jeffrey, left Washington in the 
spring of 1835 with a vague feeling that they 
were plunging into an unknown region, and 
certain political alarmists strove to foment 
their anxieties by picturing the dangers to 
which Miss Martineau would be exposed in 
the South on account of her well-known anti- 
slavery sentiments, which she had too much 
principle and too little tact to conceal. If, 
however, Harriet Martineau and her friend 
started forth with any apprehensions of social 
martyrdom, their experience at Montpellier 
speedily allayed all fears. 

At Orange Court House the perfidious inn- 
keeper, concealing the fact that Mr. Madison 
had given directions that he be informed of 
their arrival in order that he might send his 
carriage, rented them an uncomfortable turn- 
out at an excessive charge; but the tourists 
were not sufficiently out of sorts to lose the 
pleasure of the drive, and a very lovely drive 
it was, save for the mud, even at that bare 
season. Miss Martineau wrote afterwards : — 

229 



DOLLY MADISON 

''It was a sweet day of early spring. The 
patches of snow that were left under the fences and 
on the rising grounds were melting fast. The road 
was one continued slough up to the very portico of 
the house. The dwelling stands on a gentle emin- 
ence, and is neat and even handsome in its exterior, 
with a flight of steps leading up to the portico. A 
lawn and wood, which must be pleasant in summer, 
stretch behind, and from the front there is a noble 
object on the horizon, the mountain chain which 
traverses the State, and makes it eminent for its 
scenery. The shifting lights upon these blue 
mountains were a delightful refreshment to the eye 
after so many weeks of city life as we had passed. 

"We were warmly welcomed by Mrs. Madison 
and a niece, a young lady who was on a visit to her; 
and when I left my room I was conducted to the 
apartment of Mr. Madison. He had, the preced- 
ing season, suffered so severely from rheumatism, 
that during this winter he confined himself to one 
room ; rising after breakfast before nine o'clock, 
and sitting in his easy-chair till ten at night.'' 

Miss Martineau was evidently prepared to 
see Madison's faculties, mental as well as 
physical, on the decline ; but on the contrary, 
she found him keen, alert, and responsive : — 

''He appeared perfectly well during my visit, 

and was a wonderful man of eighty-three. He 

complained of one ear being deaf, and that his 

sight, which had never been perfect, prevented his 

230 



VIRGINIA HOSPITALITY 

reading; so much so that his studies ' lay in a nut- 
shell ; ' but he could hear Mrs. Madison read, and I 
did not perceive that he lost any part of the con- 
versation. He was in his chair, with a pillow be- 
hind him, when I first saw him, his little person 
wrapped in a black silk gown; a warm gray and 
white cap upon his head, which his lady took care 
should always sit becomingly; and gray worsted 
gloves, his hands having been rheumatic. 

'' His voice was clear and strong, and his manner 
of speaking particularly lively, often playful. Ex- 
cept that the face was smaller, and of course older, 
the likeness to the common engraving of him was 
perfect. He seemed not to have lost any teeth, and 
the form of the face was therefore preserved with- 
out any striking marks of age. His relish for con- 
versation could never have been keener. I was in 
perpetual fear of his being exhausted, and at the 
end of every few hours I left my seat by the arm of 
his chair and went to the sofa by Mrs. Madison on 
the other side of the room; but he was sure to fol- 
low and sit down between us ; so that when I found 
the only effect of my moving was to deprive him of 
the comfort of his chair, I returned to my station 
and never left it but for food and sleep, glad 
enough to make the most of my means of inter- 
course with one whose political philosophy I deeply 
venerated.'^ 

Many were the themes touched upon by 
these two kindred minds, each stimulated 

231 



DOLLY MADISON 

by the other to its best and clearest think- 
ing. The host and his guest talked of the 
framing of the Constitution, of nullification, 
of colonization, and of slavery in all its phases. 
Madison showed himself not only open to con- 
viction, but already fully convinced of the evils 
of slavery although he found it so intertwined 
with all the industries and institutions of his 
country that the disentanglement w-as well- 
nigh an impossibilit3^ He spoke especially, 
and with deep feeling, of the difficulties en- 
tailed upon the mistress of the household, 
declaring that the saddest slavery of all was 
that of the conscientious southern women. 

He spoke of the mistaken ideas prevailing 
abroad as to the sufferings of the negroes, and 
alluded to the surprise of some strangers 
who came to Montpellier under the impression 
that slaves were always ragged, frequently 
under the lash, and generally miserable. These 
visitors one Sunday morning saw the Mont- 
pellier negroes going to church, all in holiday 
attire, the women in bright-colored calicoes. 
When a sprinkling of rain came, up went 
a dozen umbrellas. At once the strangers 
veered about to the opinion that the lot of 
the slave was a particularly happy one, but 
Madison's candor again undeceived them. 

It is an interesting picture that rises before 

232 



VIRGINIA HOSPITALITY 

our vision as we fancy these talks and talkers 
at the old Virginia mansion in Madison's little 
" den " : Harriet Martineau, with her ear- 
trumpet, brisk and trenchant; Madison, pale 
and reserved, shrinking within his black dress- 
ing-gown; Mrs. Madison, adjusting his cap to 
the becoming angle, and dividing her time 
between her chief guest and lively little Miss 
Jeffrey. 

On the second day of her visit Miss Martineau 
was again surprised by an instance of Madison's 
energy : — 

''The active old man, who declared himself 
crippled with rheumatism, had breakfasted, risen, 
and was dressed, before we sat down to break- 
fast. He talked a good deal about the American 
presidents, and some living politicians, for two 
hours, when his letters and newspapers were 
brought in. He asked me, smiling, if I thought 
it too vast and anti-republican a privilege for the 
ex-presidents to have their letters and newspapers 
free, considering that this was the only earthly 
thing they carried away from their office. 

''The whole of this day was spent like the last, 
except that we went over the house looking at the 
busts and prints, which gave an English air to the 
dwelling which was otherwise wholly Virginian. 
During all our conversations one or another slave 
was perpetually coming to Mrs. Madison for the 
great bunch of keys; two or three more lounged 
233 



DOLLY MADISON 

about in the house, leaning against the door-posts, 
or the corner of the sofa; and the attendance 
of others was no less indefatigable in my own 
apartment.'' 

Miss Martineau's estimate of Mrs. Madison 
is of especial interest, coming as it does from 
one who was never accused of flattering, and 
whose pen, as poor Willis could bear witness, 
was capable of most uncompromising direct- 
ness. Yet she, like the rest of the world, was 
conquered by the charm of this Virginia 
woman's personality. She says of her : " She 
is a strong-minded woman, fully capable of 
entering into her husband's occupations and 
cares, and there is little doubt that he owed 
much to her intellectual companionship, as 
well as to her ability in sustaining the out- 
ward dignity of his office. When I was her 
guest she was in excellent health and lively 
spirits, and I trust that though she has lost 
the great object of her life, she may yet find 
interests enough to occupy and cheer many 
years of an honored old age." 

We gain through this last paragraph a side- 
light on Mrs. Madison's power not only to 
reflect the character and interests of those who 
surrounded her, but also to put aside her 
own feelings, and even her own physical con- 
dition, to minister to the entertainment oi 

234 



VIRGINIA HOSPITALITY 

her guests. As a matter of fact, neither her 
health nor her spirits were so good as her 
visitor fancied. She was far from well, and 
her heart was still sore over the loss of her 
sister Anna, whose death she never ceased to 
mourn, as well as full of anxiety over the 
growing infirmities of her husband, who lived 
little more than a year after this visit. 

As long as his health permitted, Madison 
no less than his wife enjoyed the stay of his 
guests, and it was partly for his diversion that 
she extended so many invitations to their 
friends. Montpellier had by this time come 
to be considered as the homestead, almost as 
much by Mrs. Madison's family as by that of 
her husband. From their early childhood the 
Cutts children looked upon the Orange County 
estate as a second home, where they too had a 
right to a pride in its possessions and associa- 
tions, its miniatures and family portraits, its 
plate and its heavy, massive, old-time furniture. 
Here they spent many joyous days in their 
youth, and here they returned whenever cir- 
cumstances permitted in after life. 

When James Madison Cutts was married, in 
the year 1834, the wedding journey was made 
to Montpellier. As the coach drew up before 
the door, Mr. Madison came out, leaning on 
the arm of Paul Jennings, to greet the guests, 

235 



DOLLY MADISON 

and though too feeble to join the family at 
dinner, he stood at the door which opened 
between the general dining-room and his own, 
and raising his glass, drank to the health of 
the bride, thinking the while perchance of that 
other bride whom he had brought to Mont- 
pellier forty years before. 



•I 



J 



i 



XIII 

LAST DAYS AT MONTPELLIER 

Within ten years after their return to Mont- 
pellier from Washington, the shadows had 
begun to gather thicker and ever thicker about 
the path of Mrs. Madison and her husband. 
The lights were going out all around. Isolated 
as they were, they found it difficult to form 
new acquaintances, and the old friends one by 
one were passing away. On July fourth, 1826, 
Jefferson died. His loss to the Madisons was 
irreparable, as his friendship had been invalu- 
able. Only a few months before his death 
Jefferson had written to Madison, begging him 
to have a care of the University of Virginia, 
and saying : " To myself you have been a pillar 
of support through life. Take care of me 
when dead, and be assured that I shall leave 
with you my last affections." His will re- 
iterated the same expressions of affection 
and esteem, declaring: "I give to my old 
friend, James Madison of Montpellier, my 
237 



DOLLY MADISON 

gold-mounted walking-staff of animal horn, 
as a token of the cordial and affectionate 
friendship which for nearly now an half century 
has united us in the same principles and pur- 
suits of what we have deemed for the greatest 
good of our country. " 

To Mrs. Madison the loss of such a friend 
was almost as great a blow as it could be to 
her husband, and the sorrow was deepened 
by the breaking up of the family, which the 
entangled condition of Jefferson's estate neces- 
sitated. A few months after the great states- 
man's death, the furniture of his house was 
sold at auction. The " Madison " and " Correa" 
chambers were stripped of their hangings, and 
the very clock which for years had stood at 
the head of Jefferson's bed passed into the 
hands of strangers. A year later Monticello 
itself was sold, and all the old joyous days 
of visiting and merry-making between the 
Jefferson and Madison households were at an 
end. 

Three years after the sale of Monticello the 
Madisons lost the companionship of another 
old and valued neighbor, James Monroe, who 
retired from the presidency a poor man, and 
at last found himself compelled to part with 
Oak Hill, his country-place, which lay in 
238 



LAST DAYS AT MONTPELLIER 

Loudoun County, Virginia, not very far from 
Montpellier. In 1831 he wrote a pathetic 
letter to Madison, dated from New York, 
April eleventh, in which he says that he finds 
the care of his estate so burdensome, and 
its loneliness so distressing, that he has de- 
cided to remove to New York to be near his 
daughter, Mrs. Gouverneur. He proposes to 
resign his seat in the Board of the University 
of Virginia, and predicts gloomily that he 
and Madison will never meet again. " I 
beg you," he says in closing, "to assure 
Mrs. Madison that I never can forget the 
friendly relation which has existed between 
her and my family. It often reminds me of 
incidents of the most interesting character." 

To this Madison replied at once, and in his 
warmest manner, assuring him of the un- 
changeable regard of himself and Mrs. Madi- 
son, and urging him to retain, for the present 
at least, his position on the Board of the 
University. But three months later James 
Monroe died (on the fourth of July, like Adams 
and Jefferson), and so another homestead was 
deserted and another old friend was lost to 
James and Dolly Madison. 

Death struck nearer home than the circle 
of friends during these years. In 1829, at the 
239 



DOLLY MADISON 

age of ninety-seven, Mrs. Madison's mother-in- 
law passed away, and was carried to her long 
rest in the little burying-ground below the hill. 
In February, 1831, news reached Montpellier 
of the death of " Cousin Dolly " for whom Mrs. 
Madison was named ; and on an August day in 
1832 the beloved "sister-child," Anna Payne 
Cutts, died somewhat suddenly, after an ill- 
ness in which a brief and deceptive improve- 
ment had led her family to believe that her life 
might be spared. It was indeed a deep and sore 
affliction, and one which aged and permanently 
saddened Mrs. Madison. It was perhaps well 
for her that her attention was so absorbed by 
her care of her husband that she could find 
little time for the indulgence of grief. Every 
day her company and assistance grew more 
essential to Madison's welfare. She became 
not only his nurse and companion, but his 
eyes and right hand. She was, indeed, as she 
described herself, the very shadow of her 
husband. 

The summer of 1829 was marked by a cheer- 
ing diversion in a visit paid by Mr. and Mrs. 
Madison to Richmond at the time of the Con- 
stitutional Convention, of which Madison was 
a member. From Governor Giles they received 
the following cordial invitation : — 
240 

I 



LAST DAYS AT MONTPELLIER 

Richmond, August W\ 1829. 
Mr AND M'.^ Madison : — 

My Dear Sir and Madam, — Permit me to 
assure you I was very much gratified that your Dis- 
trict had honored the state so far as to place you, 
Sir, in the Convention for altering or amending the 
Constitution. It is at the same time with sincere 
sorrow and concern I have learnt that the state 
of your health has, since that time, ban [sic] im- 
paired by indisposition ; but I earnestly hope that 
it is already completely restored, or will be, at least, 
so far improved as to enable you to take your seat 
in the Convention, and to afford that important 
service to the state which it justly anticipates from 
your weight of character, superior intelligence, and 
long experience in public affairs, I beg leave also, 
Sir and Madam, to assure you that I still recollect, 
with affectionate sensibilities, your kind attentions 
during a long personal acquaintance, and that it 
would now afford me great pleasure if yourselves and 
intimates would consent to become members of my 
family, and to accept a chamber in the government 
house during the session of the approaching Con- 
vention. That position would afford you some ac- 
commodations which it might be difficult to obtain 
in any house of public entertainment in the city. 
It is retired, near the Capitol, and would afford you 
opportunities of receiving visits from your numerous 
friends with more ease and convenience to your- 
selves than perhaps elsewhere. Permit me to press 
your acceptance of this invitation, and to assure you 
16 241 



DOLLY MADISON 

in so doing you would afford the sincerest pleasure 
to myself, as well as to every member of my family. 
Be pleased, Sir and Madam, to accept my re- 
spectful and friendly regards. 

W? B. Giles. 
[Addressed] 

The Honorable 

James Madison and Lady, 
Montpelier. 

This visit to Richmond brought to Mrs. 
Madison several weeks of gayety and social 
enjoyment, such as she had scarcely known 
since her return to Virginia. 

The twenty years of life at Montpellier after 
leaving Washington were no less busy for 
Madison than the years of official duties. " I 
have rarely," he wrote, "during the period of 
my public life found my time less at my dis- 
posal than since 1 took my leave of it; nor 
have I the consolation of finding that as my 
powers of application necessarily decline the 
demands on them proportionately decrease." 
His advice on political matters was constantly 
sought by men in every public office, and the 
heavy volumes filled with letters, pages in 
length, written in his fine, painstaking hand, 
show clearly enough how just was this com- 
plaint. His duties in connection with the 
university were specially onerous, because the^ 

242 



LAST DAYS AT MONTPELLIER 

took him from the home to which he clung 
more and more tenaciously as his health and 
strength failed. These trips to Charlottesville 
were often sources of anxiety to his wife as 
well, and a letter written by her on this occa- 
sion shows how tenderly she watched over and 
cared for her husband's health. As I unfolded 
its yellow page, and turned its faded ink to 
the light, I mused on the strange vicissitudes 
which had brought it under alien eyes. 

Monday, — 9 O'Clock. 
My Beloved, — I trust in God that you are 
well again, as your letters assure me you are. How 
bitterly I regret not going with you! Yours of 
"Friday midday '^ did not reach me till last evg. 
I felt so full of fear that you might relapse that I 
hastened to pack a few cloaths and give orders for 
the carriage to be ready and the post waited for. 
This mor'g, happily the messenger has returned 
with your letter of yesterday, which revives my 
heart and leads me to hope you will be up at home 
on Wednesday night with your own affectionate 
nurse. If business sh'd detain you longer — or you 
sh'd feel unwell again, let me come for you. Mama 
and all are well. I enclose you one letter. The 
only one rec'd by yesterday's post, w4th two latest 
papers, to read on your journey back. I hope you 
rec'd my last of Thursday containing letters and 
papers. My mind is so anxiously occupied about 
243 



DOLLY MADISON 

you that I cannot write. May angels guard thee, 
my dear best friend! 

Address, 

To James Madison, 

University. 
Tuesday mor'g. 

The amount which Madison accomplished 
under all his physical limitations adds another 
to the instances which go to show how vast a 
proportion of the world's work is done by the 
physically weak. From the time of leaving 
college, when he believed himself doomed to 
an early grave, until the day when at eighty- 
five years of age he tranquilly closed his eyes 
forever upon earth, he never knew a year of 
robust vigor or abounding vitality; yet the 
body of his work is indeed a monument more 
enduring than brass. His longevity and his 
prolonged ability for work were in large 
measure due to the constant care given by his 
wife to all the conditions affecting his well- 
being, and to the unselfish devotion with which 
she sought to take upon her own shoulders the 
domestic and social cares which weighed more 
and more heavily upon his declining years. 

The overseeing of an estate like Montpellier 
was in itself a life-business. The slaves, who 
numbered more than a hundred, were not 
244 



LAST DAYS AT MONTPELLIER 

intrusted to the unregulated brutality of an 
overseer, but were directed and disciplined by 
the master himself. He never struck a ser- 
vant, nor allowed another to do it. So careful 
was he of their feelings that he took pains to 
administer even his reproofs in private, and 
with that habitual gentleness which led all 
who knew him to love him. As long as he 
was able to walk about he enjoyed the superin- 
tendence of the farm, the regulation of crops, 
and the cultivation of foreign trees and shrubs 
sent him from all parts of the world, some of 
which, like the Lebanon cedars, still stand as 
witnesses of his fostering care. 

His chief recreation in the latter years was 
driving. He dearly loved horses. No man 
had a better eye for the points of a fine animal, 
and no jockey ever succeeded in cheating him. 
In the Washington stable there were always 
at least seven horses, and at Montpellier, of 
course, many more. On the Virginia planta- 
tion, at a distance of perhaps a hundred yards 
from the house, across the lawn in the rear, 
the stable built by Madison still raises its 
sharp gable from among thick-growing trees 
and shrubbery well planned to hide its less 
interesting features. 

As rheumatism and old age grew more and 
more crippling, Madison gave up one out- 

245 



DOLLY MADISON 

of-door pursuit after another, abandoning 
even his customary measured walk on the 
porch, and at length resigned himself with 
philosophy, if not with cheerfulness, to the 
monotonous routine of an invalid's life. His 
little room which opened out to the rear of 
the dining-room now bounded his world. It 
held a high-posted bed with crimson damask 
canopy brought from the Tuileries by Monroe, 
besides his desk, couch, chairs, and the table 
whereat he took his meals. When the door 
was open he could hear the cheerful echo of 
the talk at the dining-room table, and often 
called out jovial answers and questions, once 
bidding the doctor who sat at the foot of the 
table to do his duty under penalty of being 
cashiered. He loved a jest to the end. When 
some one urged him not to talk in his recum- 
bent position, he answered, "Oh! I always 
talk more easily when I lie." 

Sad as Mrs. Madison's heart was at the 
sight of her husband's increasing feebleness, 
she seconded his attempts at cheerfulness, 
drew company to the house as long as it 
amused him, and shut it out when he grew too 
weak to bear the confusion. For eight months 
she never went beyond the gates of Montpellier, 
and as the end drew near, in the month of 
June, 1836, she was seldom absent from the 

246 



LAST DAYS AT MONTPELLIER 

sick-room for more than a few minutes at a 
time. Paul Jennings was her faithful assist- 
ant in her ministrations He says in his 
Reminiscences : — 

^^I was always with Mr. Madison till he died, 
and shaved him every other day for sixteen years. 
For six months before his death he was unable to 
walk, and spent most of his time reclined on a 
couch; but his mind was bright, and with his nu- 
merous visitors he talked with as much animation 
and strength of voice as I ever heard him in his 
best days. 

'' I was absent when he died. That morning 
Sukey brought him his breakfast as usual. He 
could not swallow. His niece, Mrs. Willis, said, 
*What is the matter. Uncle James?' 'Nothing 
more than a change of mind, my dear.' His head 
instantly dropped, and he ceased breathing as 
quietly as the snuff of a candle goes out.'' 

So died this great and good man, passing 
away with a jest and a kindly smile upon his 
gentle lips, as befitted the end of a simple, 
gentle life. The interment was in the little 
burying-ground where others of his family had 
been laid before him. The pall-bearers were 
neighboring planters, the Barbour brothers, 
Charles, Howard, and Reuben Conway. A 
sad procession of relatives, friends, and ser- 
vants followed the body to the grave, wherein 

247 



DOLLY MADISON 

James Madison was laid to rest, and then all 
was over. Another chapter in Dolly Madison's 
life was closed forever, and for the thirteen 
years that remained to her she went forward 
alone forever, missing that wise counsel and 
firm support which had so long been hers. 

She met the blow bravely, as she faced every 
sorrow that came to her in life, determined 
that the gloom should overshadow as little as 
possible the lives of those around her. But 
the strain of her long months of anxious nurs- 
ing was too great for her physical strength, 
and within a few months after Madison's death 
the inevitable re-action came, and her health 
failed utterly. The old trouble with her eyes 
increased to such an extent that she was com- 
pelled for weeks to keep her bed, with the 
curtains closely drawn to shut out every ray 
of light. 

The sad days of sickness and sorrow in Mrs. 
Madison's early widowhood were comforted 
by letters of sympathy which poured in upon 
her from all parts of the country, letters 
so full of admiration and esteem for her 
dead husband that he seemed to live again 
in the heartfelt love and appreciation of his 
countrymen. 

One of the earliest as well as the most 
important of these letters was written by 

248 



LAST DAYS AT MONTPELLIER 

Andrew Jackson, and accompanied by a cop}^ 
of the resolutions drawn up in the Senate and 
House of Representatives in Washington, when 
the death of Madison was announced. 

Washington, July, 9, 1836. 

Madam, — It appearing to have been the inten- 
tion of Congress to make me the organ of assuring 
you of the profound respect entertained by both its 
branches for your person and character, and of their 
sincere condolence in the late afflicting dispensa- 
tion of Providence, which has at once deprived you 
of a beloved companion, and your country of one 
of its most valued citizens, I perform that duty 
by transmitting the documents herewith enclosed. 

No expression of my own sensibility at the loss 
sustained by yourself and the nation could add to 
the consolation to be derived from these high 
evidences of the public sympathy. Be assured, 
madam, that there is not one of your countrymen 
who feels more poignantly the blow which has 
fallen upon you, or who will cherish with a more 
enduring constancy the memory of the virtues, 
the services, and the purity of the illustrious man 
whose glorious and patriotic life has just been 
terminated by a tranquil death. 

I have the honor to be, madam, your most 
obedient servant, 

Andrew Jackson. 

To Mrs. D. P. Madison, 

Montpellier, Virginia. 
249 



DOLLY MADISON 

The response of Mrs. Madison is marked by 
a fitness and dignity altogether admirable. 
It is dated Montpellier, August twentieth, 
1836, and runs: — 

I received, sir, in due time, your letter con- 
veying to me the resolutions Congress were pleased 
to adopt on the occasion of the death of my beloved 
husband, — A communication made, the more 
grateful by the kind expression of your sympathy 
which it contained. 

The high and just estimation of my husband 
by my countrymen and friends, and their generous 
participation in the sorrow occasioned by our irre- 
trievable loss (expressed through their supreme 
authorities and otherwise) are the only solace of 
which my heart is susceptible on the departure of 
him who had never lost sight of that consistency, 
symmetry and beauty of character in all its parts, 
which secured to him the love and admiration of 
his country, and which must ever be the subject 
of peculiar and tender reverence to one whose 
happiness was derived from their daily and 
constant exercise. 

The best return I can make for the sympathy 
of my country is to fulfil the sacred trust his con- 
fidence reposed in me, that of placing before it and 
the world what his pen prepared for their use, — a 
legacy the importance of which is deeply impressed 
on my mind. 

With great respect, 

D. P. Madison. 

To the President of the United States. 
250 



LAST DAYS AT MONTPELLIER 

The sacred trust herein referred to was the 
publication of that marvellous report of the 
proceedings of the Constitutional Convention, 
written out daily and with absolute accuracy 
of detail by the untiring hand of Madison, 
who had the foresight to realize how enor- 
mously valuable such records would be to the 
world in after times. 

In his will, bearing date April fifteenth, 
1835, the year before his death, he directs what 
use shall be made of this valuable manuscript. 
In the beginning he declares: "I give all my 
personal estate of every description, orna- 
mental as well as useful, except as hereinafter 
otherwise given, to my dear wife ; and I also 
give to her all my manuscript papers, having 
entire confidence in her discreet and proper 
use of them, but subject to the qualification in 
the succeeding clause." 

After stating that he desires that his report 
of the Constitutional Convention at Philadel- 
phia, in 1787, be published, he continues: "It 
is my desire that the report as made by me 
should be published under her authority and 
direction; and as the publication thereof may 
yield a considerable amount beyond the neces- 
sary expenses thereof, I give the net proceeds 
thereof to my wife, charged with the following 
to be paid out of that fund only." The lega- 
251 



DOLLY MADISON 

cies afterward mentioned amounted to about 
fifteen hundred dollars. 

Mrs. Madison was eager to set about the 
task imposed upon her of superintending the 
publication of this manuscript, but her eyes 
for some time were too weak. At length, in 
the spring of 1837, by the earnest advice o£ 
her physician, she left Montpellier to seek the 
benefits of change of scene for her mind, and 
of the mountain air and healing waters at the 
White Sulphur Springs for her bodily ail- 
ments. The prescription proved so successful 
that she returned to her home at the end of 
August in greatly improved health, and with 
some restoration of her old cheerfulness. 

Her brother at this time left Virginia for 
Kentucky, and Mrs. Madison, greatly de- 
pressed by the prospect of a solitary winter 
in the isolation of Montpellier, begged to 
have his daughter Anna left with her. The 
arrangement was finally made, and this beloved 
niece became her adopted daughter in fact, 
and later in name. 



252 



XIY 
WASHINGTON ONCE MORE 

Lovely Lafayette Square, spoken of by Mrs. 
Madison as "President's Square," lies in the 
heart of historic Washington. Here once the 
apples from Davy Burns' orchard strewed the 
ground; here later generations of children 
played; here Downing planned vistas and 
planted trees, and here General Jackson in 
bronze still waves his hat to posterity from 
the back of that preposterous steed forever 
perilously poised in air on its hind feet. On 
the northeast corner of this little park stands 
a square, solid mansion now owned by the 
Cosmos Club, but always pointed out to 
strangers as " Dolly Madison's house. " With- 
in its walls she spent the last twelve years of 
her life, and there she died. Despite some 
alterations and restorations, it still remains 
substantially the same as in her lifetime. - 

It was built by Richard Cutts at about 
the time of Madison's presidency; and Mrs. 
Madison's much-loved sister Anna, with her 
253 



DOLLY MADISON 

family, occupied it for many years. Mr. Cutts 
lost heavily during the war of 1812, and later 
became involved in unfortunate mining ven- 
tures, so that at last he was compelled to 
part with his house, and it came into the 
hands of Madison. It was to this house, there- 
fore, rich in family associations, that Mrs. 
Madison came with her niece, Anna Payne, 
when Montpellier in its solitude became insup- 
portable ; and here, within sight of the White 
House, where she had spent such happy and 
brilliant days, she established once more her 
household gods. 

The Washington to which she thus returned 
after twenty years was a different city from that 
which she had left. The houses had grown 
thicker along the thoroughfares; throngs of 
people walked the streets which had formerly 
been like country lanes. The White House 
had attained to the dignity of Brussels carpets 
in the drawing-rooms and silken curtains at 
the windows, French mirrors on the walls, and 
English chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. 
Yet, with all these advances, there was already 
a something lost, a delicate evasive flavor of 
aristocracy, a tone of deprecating refinement, a 
gentle, remonstrant, spiritual aloofness which 
held the crowd at bowing distance. All this 
was gone. The reign of triumphant democracy 
254 



WASHINGTON ONCE MORE 

was at hand. The curious crowds surged 
through the White House, and the custom of 
hand-shaking already threatened the nation's 
chief with a new terror. 

One of the presidents (Mrs. Madison's warm 
friend and admirer, James K. Polk), reduced 
the matter of official hand-shaking to a science : 
"If a man," he said, "surrender his arm to 
be shaken by one horizontallj^, by another per- 
pendicularly, and by another with a strong 
grip, he cannot fail to suffer severely from it ; 
but if he will shake and not be shaken, grip 
and not be gripped, taking care always to 
squeeze the hand of his adversary as hard as 
the adversary squeezes his, he will suffer no 
inconvenience from it. Now," he added, "I 
can generally anticipate a strong grip from a 
strong man, and I then take advantage of him 
by being quicker than he, and seizing him by 
the tip of his fingers." 

We can fancy that all this familiarity and 
lack of courtliness must have come with some- 
what of a shock upon one who had presided 
over the more elegant society of the earlier 
time; but her tact as usual kept her silent 
where comment would have wounded, and she 
dropped at once into the new order of things, 
establishing a sort of court of her own, and 
recognized throughout the rest of her life as 
255 



DOLLY MADISON 

a queen dowager. Once, indeed, at a ball she 
turned to her companion and said, "What a 
difference twenty years make in society ! Here 
are young men and women not born when I 
left the capital, whose names are familiar, but 
whose faces are unknown to me." 

Many strangers and foreigners came to 
Washington in these years, and all were 
brought to see the widow of the famous states- 
man, who now began to be known as "the 
venerable Mrs. Madison." The old-fashioned 
gown and turban, to which she clung in spite 
of the fickle changes of fashion, doubtless con- 
tributed to the impression of her advanced 
age, and she was associated with her hus- 
band's period by those who did not know the 
difference in their ages. 

A certain air of vagueness always hung 
about her age, owing to the fact that she was 
understood to be somewhat sensitive in the 
matter, which was rarely mentioned even in 
her own family. In fact, it was generally con- 
sidered in those days an incivility to keep too 
close an account of the advance of time, and 
although Mrs. Madison's birthday was always 
celebrated in the family circle, no comment 
was made upon the number of years it marked, 
till on one such occasion a little nephew rashly 
exclaimed, "Why, aunty, you are just the 

256 



WASHINGTON ONCE MORE 

same age to-day that you were on your last 
birthday ! " The family were aghast, but Mrs. 
Madison patted him on the head with undis- 
turbed tranquillity and smilingly responded, 
" So you remember, my little man ! " 

In "pite of her efforts to seem and to look 
young, her age was generally exaggerated. 
Mrs. Maury, who saw her in her latter days, 
writes of her as bearing herself with regal 
grace, " still at the age of eighty-six eminently 
beautiful, with a complexion as fresh and fair 
and a skin as smooth as that of an English 
girl." Philip Hone, the New York merchant, 
makes a record in his journal for March, 1842, 
of a visit to Mrs. Webster's drawing-room and 
his subsequent call upon Mrs. Madison. " She 
is a young lady of fourscore years and upward, " 
he says; "goes to parties and receives com- 
pany like the Queen of this new world." At 
this time she could not have been over 
seventy-four. 

Another visitor at Washington in this year 
was Charles Dickens, who recorded his impres- 
sion of that city with the same genial courtesy 
which marks all his comments upon America. 
His description, however, is so vivid that it is 
worth noting as a picture of Mrs. Madison's 
surroundings as they struck alien eyes. He 
urges his English reader to take in imagina- 

17 257 



DOLLY MADISON 

tion the worst parts of the City Road and 
Pentonville, — 

<*burn the whole down; build it up again in 
plaster; widen it a little; throw in part of St. 
John's Wood, put green blinds outside all the 
private houses, with a red curtain and a white one 
in every window; plough up all the roads; plant 
a great deal of coarse turf in every place where it 
ought not to be ; erect three handsome buildings 
in stone and marble anywhere; but the more 
entirely out of every-one's way the better; call 
one the Post Office and one the Treasury; make it 
scorching hot in the morning and freezing cold in 
the afternoon with an occasional tornado of wind 
and dust; leave a brickfield without the bricks in 
all places where a street may naturally be expected 
• — and that's Washington." 

Crude and provincial as the national capital 
no doubt appeared to foreign eyes, to Dolly 
Madison, who had been shut up for a score of 
years to the seclusion of a Virginia plantation, 
it presented a bewildering scene of fashion 
and gayety, and as the period of her mourning 
wore away she began by degrees to take up 
her old life in the gay world. 

Although the straitened condition of her 
finances hampered her in the exercise of her 
old-time hospitality, the sum of thirty thou- 
sand dollars paid to Mrs. Madison by Congress, 

258 



WASHINGTON ONCE MORE 

for the Reports of the Constitutional Conven- 
tion, together with the amount left by her 
husband, would have enabled her to live with 
comfort, if not with elegance, in her new home, 
had it not been for the misconduct of her son. 
But what fortune ever sufficed for the demands 
of a gambler, a spendthrift, and debauchee ! It 
soon became necessary to sell Montpellier to 
meet the debts incurred by Payne Todd ; and 
his mother, though striving with pathetic self- 
sacrifice to keep a brave front to the world, 
was often reduced to the verge of actual 
necessity. 

In these financial straits she wrote from 
Washington to her son, addressing him with 
unwonted formality as " My dear sir." 

^* I beg, you will sign & return the enclosed as 
soon as possible, as I wish to return them to the 
Bank before the V^ I have hope & expectation of 
your writing me all about yourself, & m}^ affairs. 
Will you tell me whether or not M"" Monchor 
[sic] will pay me the remnant due. I shall say 
nothing to him at this instant of the sufferings he 
now causes by his delay, but upon the rec^ & con- 
tents, of an early letter from you, depends my 
taking the Boat, or going by way of Richmond to 
your house. 

*'But one short note from you since we parted — 
once I wrote to you — I send you papers. 
259 



DOLLY MADISON 

''Farewell ! J'w not well or should saj^ more. 
Mr Simms has sent me a Bill for nearly 50 | — 
— Again — burn my letters of business." 

Paul Jennings, who had bought his freedom 
from Mrs. Madison, and was now living with 
Daniel Webster, often brought to his old mis- 
tress little gifts of the necessaries of life, and 
even market-baskets full of provisions, sup- 
plied by the thoughtful kindness of his new 
master. In her old age Dolly Madison became 
a sort of nation's ward; and Congress, de- 
termined to protect her from the depredations 
of her undutiful and worthless son, made a 
second purchase, this time of Madison's letters 
and other writings, for which it paid twenty 
thousand dollars, with the proviso that the 
funds be held in trust for Mrs. Madison, and 
named as trustees James Buchanan, John Y. 
Mason, and Richard Smith. 

As though it could not do enough to show 
respect to the widow of James Madison, both 
on her own account and in memory of her 
venerated husband. Congress also voted her 
the franking privilege and a seat on the floor 
of the House whenever she chose to attend its 
sessions, an honor never before granted to a 
woman. 

The presence of women in the galleries of 
the House of Representatives was a new sight 

260 



WASHINGTON ONCE MORE 

to Mrs. Madison, as in her day they had been 
excluded in accordance with English prece- 
dent. It is related that theii admission dated 
from an evening when a lady meeting Fisher 
Ames at a party expressed her regret that she 
should not be able to hear the speech which 
he was to make. Ames replied that he knew of 
no law against her coming, and it was accord- 
ingly arranged that she should make up a 
party of ladies for the occasion. They came 
and were admitted, and ever after women 
continued to claim the privilege thus granted. 
The little world of Washington society paid 
homage to Mrs. Madison as gladly as the 
representatives of the nation. On public holi- 
days, such as the Fourth of July and New 
Year's Day, her doors stood open, and the 
throng of people who had paid their respects 
to the President at the White House trooped 
across the square to offer greetings to the 
"dowager." A yomig grand-niece who was 
present at one of the levees in the old corner 
house has recorded her childish impressions 
of the scene. She writes : — 

^'The earliest recollections I have of Aunt Madi- 
son are associated with a lovely day in May or 
June, when, arrayed in our best, my brother and I 
accompanied our mother across the ragged little 
square opposite the White House. We were 
261 



DOLLY MADISON 

ushered in by Ealph, the young negro, who had 
succeeded Paul, so well known as Mr. Madison's 
body-servant in old times. We were announced 
as * young Master and Miss.' My mother was 
^Miss Ellen.' This was called Mrs. Madison's 
Levee-Day, and everybody came, much as they do 
now to make a short visit, gossip a little, then 
give place to new-comers. Aunt stood near the 
window. I was a curious little girl only eight or 
nine years of age, and my wide-open eyes saw a 
very sweet-looking lady, tall and very erect. She 
greeted us affectionately, and told us to go with 
Cousin Anna (Anna Payne), who would amuse the 
young people. I clung to my mother's hand and 
took observations after the manner of children in 
general. 

'^Aunt Madison wore a purple velvet dress, 
with plain straight skirt amply gathered to a tight 
waist, cut low and filled in with soft tulle. Her 
pretty white throat was encircled by a lace cra- 
vatte, such as the old-fashioned gentlemen used to 
wear, tied twice around and fastened with an 
amethyst pin (which I remember, as Aunt after- 
wards gave my mother the earrings to correspond 
and I was sometimes allowed to wear them). 
Thrown lightly over the shoulders was a little 
lace shawl or cape as in her portrait. I thought 
her turban very wonderful, as I never saw any 
one else wear such a head-dress. It was made of 
some soft silky material and became her rarely. 

** There were two little bunches of very black 
262 



WASHINGTON ONCE MORE 

curls on either side of the smooth white brow; her 
eyQS were blue and laughed when she smiled and 
greeted the friends who seemed so glad to see her. 
I wondered at her smooth, soft skin, as T was told 
that she was over seventy, which at that time was 
a great age to me. 

''A throng of people passed in and out, among 
them some old ladies, whom I have since heard of 
as the wives of men known to fame. There was 
Mrs. Decatur who at that time lived in a little 
cottage near Georgetown College, and never went 
out except to call on Aunt Madison. She wore a 
little close bonnet, and had great sad dark eyes. 
Mrs. Lear (Mrs. Tobias Lear whose husband was 
Washington's secretary) was another most beauti- 
ful old lady whom we all called Aunt, I suppose 
because all the children loved her; Mr. Bancroft, 
who lived in the Ogle Tayloe house, next door; 
Mr. and Mrs. Webster, whom I saw for the first 
time; also Mrs. Polk, who was always so gracefully 
attentive to Mrs. Madison, and was then a tall, 
handsome, young-looking person and much beloved 
in society. 

*^This levee was over at four o'clock, when only 
we of the family remained with Aunt, who was 
still fresh and smiling. I have a very distinct 
consciousness in connection with this levee that 
she disliked nothing so much as loud talking and 
laughing." 

The dress of Mrs. Madison which her niece 
describes at her aunt's levee, and which so 

263 



DOLLY MADISON 

struck the youthful fancy, was the same in 
which she was painted by Wood in that por- 
trait, the most familiar and the least pleasing 
of all that have come down to us, though the 
quaintness of attire and the delicacy of the 
hand do much to atone for the set smile, and 
stiff carriage of the head. A lady who knew 
Mrs. Madison in those days tells me that she 
said to her a propos of the yards of silk tulle 
which she wore about her neck, that she needed 
it to give softness to the face, and that after 
seventy the throat became a little " scraggy, " 
and needed the veil of tulle or lace. So ten- 
derly did time touch this lady of the old 
school that three score and ten years found her 
still beautiful. 

" For her e'en Time grew debonair 
He finding cheeks unclaimed of care 
With late delaying roses there 

And lingering dimples, 
Had spared to touch the fair old face 
And only kissed with Vauxhall grace 
The soft white hand that stroked her lace 

And smoothed her wimples." 

In 1844 Mrs. Madison was one of the guestsj 
on the man-of-war Princeton at the time oi 
the explosion of the famous great gun ironi- 
cally known as "the Peacemaker," whicl 
might have proved fatal to her, as it did t( 
the marines standing near, but for a fortunal 

261 



WASHINGTON ONCE MORE 

chance which detained the ladies in the cabin 
listening to the songs and merry-making of 
the young people. The calamity, with its 
attendant shocking sights and sounds, made 
so deep an impression upon Mrs. Madison that 
she could never after be induced to talk of it. 

Meantime administration succeeded admin- 
istration, and still Mrs. Madison remained, a 
prominent figure in official society, only the 
more honored by one president after another. 
At the inauguration ball of Polk a great crowd 
thronged the National Theatre in which it 
was held. In the midst of the rush and 
scramble Commodore Elliot fell victim to a 
pick-pocket and lost his wallet. Of all its 
contents he declared that what he most 
regretted was a letter from Mrs. Madison and 
a lock of her husband's hair. Old friendship 
was not weakened by the flight of time. 

In the unpublished diary of President Polk 
we have an account of one of the last levees 
held during his administration, which is also 
closely associated with Mrs. Madison. The 
entry is dated Wednesday, February seventh, 
1849: — 

" General notice had been given in the City papers 

that the President's Mansion would be open for the 

reception of visitors this evening. All the parlours, 

including the East Hoom, were lighted up. The 

265 



DOLLY MADISON 

Marine Band of Musicians occupied the outer Hall. 
Many hundreds of persons, ladies and gentlemen, 
attended. It was what would be called in the 
Society of Washington a very fashionable levee. 
Foreign Ministers, — their families and suites; 
Judges, Members of both Houses of Congress, and 
many citizens and strangers were of the company 
present. I stood and shook hands with them for 
near three hours. Towards the close of the evening 
I passed through the crowded rooms with the ven- 
erable Mrs. Madison on my arm. It was near 
twelve o'clock when the company retired.'^ 

Six months later both the chief actors on 
this social scene were laid in their graves. 
This is the last glimpse we catch of Mrs. 
Madison at any public function, and most 
appropriately does it close. She entered 
Washington official society on the arm of 
Jefferson, and left it on the arm of Polk, her 
life, meanwhile, public and semi-public, hav- 
ing spanned nearly half a century, and covered 
the administrations of nine presidents. 



XV 

OLD AGE AND DEATH 

And where during all these varying experi- 
ences of Mrs. Madison's life, when she stood 
so much in need of counsel and support, was 
the son who should have rendered both? This 
was the question which all Mrs. Madison's 
friends asked, and none could answer. For 
his mother, her feelings had been long ago 
summed up in a last vain appeal to his better 
nature, when she wrote : " I have said in my 
late letters as well as in this all that I thought 
sufficient to influence you. 1 must now put 
my trust in God alone." 

Payne Todd's life presents a melancholy 
picture of wasted opportunities, of grace and 
charm blurred and at last obliterated by glut- 
tony and dissipation, of demonstrative affec- 
tion transformed into filial indifference and 
ingratitude by long years of self-indulgence. 
Yet, while this undutiful son was doing all in 
his power to break his mother's heart, he per- 
267 



DOLLY MADISON 

suaded himself that he loved her and intended 
to do much, but always in the future, to make 
her happy. When his debts had made neces- 
sary the sale of Montpellier and its slaves, he 
soothed his regrets by building on his estate 
nearby, known as "Toddsbirth," a strange 
conglomeration of cottages, one of which he 
intended for his mother's occupancy, and so 
arranged that by one of its long windows she 
could enter a great tower wherein he had 
planned a ball-room and state dining-apart- 
ment. Of course lack of funds prevented the 
completion of this eccentric home, as well as 
the carrying out of his scheme for a silk-farm, 
for which, after his usual unbusinesslike 
fashion, he had brought over from France a 
number of silk manufacturers before even plant- 
ing mulberry -trees or hatching silk -worms. 

His appetite he gratified as freely as his 
whims; and while Mrs. Madison and her 
devoted niece were struggling to secure the 
bare necessaries of life, or dependent upon the 
bounty of comparative strangers, Payne Todd 
was in the habit of sending to Europe for rare 
cheeses and other table luxuries. As a result 
of his free indulgence, his face became bloated, 
and his figure shapeless, and so completely did 
his aspect change that few would have recog- 



I 



OLD AGE AND DEATH 

nized in his sodden features and heavy form 
the alert, graceful, laughing-eyed lad who had 
entered manhood as " the Prince " with brighter 
prospects than any youth in America. 

Only once more does the shameful story of 
Payne Todd's misguided career touch the 
narrative of his mother's life. It came upon 
me with a shock of surprise, when among the 
papers of the Probate Court in Washington I 
found the record of the effort of John Payne 
Todd to break the will of his mother in order 
to secure the bequest which she had left to her 
"dear daughter," Anna Payne. Such mean- 
ness seemed impossible, even for Payne Todd. 
It is gratifying to learn that the jury declined 
to accept his view of the situation, and that 
he was obliged to content himself with the 
money realized from the sale of the household 
effects. He outlived his mother by two years, 
and then perished miserably of typhoid fever 
in a Washington hotel, no one save negroes 
near him, and with only one friend to follow 
him to his unmourned grave in the Congres- 
sional Cemetery. 

A sadly forlorn life indeed would Dolly 
Madison have led in these latter days but for 
the affection of her nieces and nephews; but 
this surrounded her unfailingly to the last, 

269 



DOLLY MADISON 

and the youthful companionship which they 
drew around her was the best solace for her 
increasing disposition to melancholy. 

Anna Payne was full of mirth, and not too 
sedate for such school-girl pranks as inviting 
the President of the United States to dine on 
April-Fool's Day, and making merry over the 
discomfiture of her aunt and her guest when 
the jest was discovered. Mrs. Madison par- 
doned this escapade, as she found it easy to 
pardon many things to youth. She was indeed 
one in whom the spirit of youth was eternally 
asserting itself under all the aging experiences 
of life, and something within her drew all 
young folks very close to her heart. Of this 
chord of sympathy they were as sensible as 
she. 

A few months before her death. Miss 
Dahlgren, the young sister of the admiral, at 
the conclusion of a call on Mrs. Madison, said 
to her : " I have a new autograph album, and 
I must have you write in it before any one 
else." Her cordial hostess, throwing her 
arms around her, answered, " Well, you dar- 
ling little flatterer, if you will get me a good 
quill, I will do it. I cannot write with these 
new-fangled steel pens. " The quill was found, 
and the desired autograph written. 
270 



J 



OLD AGE AND DEATH 



4 




-1^^ 



271 



DOLLY MADISON 

The characteristic of this quotation con- 
tributed to Miss Dahlgren's album is the same 
which marked all of Mrs. Madison's utterances 
by tongue or pen, that propriety without origi- 
nality which distinguished her and contributed 
so much to her success. Had she had more 
wit she had surely had more enemies ; had she 
had less humor she would have won fewer 
friends ; but the nice balance with which she 
held all things subject to good sense and good 
taste was her strongest claim to the esteem 
which she enjoyed. 

It was no easy task in Mrs. Madison's day 
for folk of consequence to escape the intrusion 
of the autograph-hunter, and in Washington 
the evil reached its climax. Women waited 
outside the door of the Senate with open albums, 
ready to beset the first man who ventured out. 
Others besieged the court-rooms, and boldly 
sent up their little autograph volumes to the 
judges on the bench with an accompanying 
request for "just a line," until public men 
were forced to keep on hand a supply of appro- 
priate sentiments or verses of gallantry to 
satisfy the collector's greed of their admirers. 
Doubtless, however, they, like President Mon- 
roe, found the flattery sufficiently sustaining 
to atone for the fatigue. 

The Italian proverb declares a white wall 
272 



OLD AGE AND DEATH 

the fools' paradise, and it is no less true 
that an autograph album is the fools' pillory. 
In turning the rainbow-tinted leaves of our 
grandmothers' albums and Tokens of Friend- 
ship we are often tempted to smile over the 
sentimental sighings, and worst of all the 
facetious fatuity which have preserved the 
memory of the signers' silliness to the second 
and third generation; but Dolly Madison was 
by far too shrewd a woman to fall into such 
self-committing folly, and the various "ele- 
gant extracts," signed by her name, which 
exist in old autograph collections are inva- 
riably well found and neatly turned quotations, 
as in Mrs. J. J. Roosevelt's album, where she 
copied a sonnet to Lafayette with the accom- 
panying reflection : " The memory of departed 
virtue is inscribed upon the soul like writing 
upon adamant." 

As Mrs. Madison advanced in life, writing 
of any sort became increasingly difficult on 
account of her failing eyesight, and her niece 
added to her many other offices the duty of 
amanuensis. Her handwriting so closely re- 
sembled that of her famous aunt that a note 
from her satisfied both autograph hunters and 
acquaintances, thus relieving Mrs. Madison of 
a serious tax on her time and strength. 

As her age advanced, even the social duties 
18 273 



DOLLY MADISON 

of Washington life began to weigh heavily 
upon Mrs. Madison, yet to the end her house 
continued a centre of hospitality. Not very 
long before her death her younger nephew, 
Richard D. Cutts, Jr., was married in her 
drawing-room, and the wedding reception was 
one of the largest of the year at the capital. 
His bride was one of the namesakes of Martha 
Jefferson, and well-known in society ; and the 
united acquaintance of the two families made 
a throng which taxed the Lafayette Square 
house to its utmost capacity. 

All this hospitality was conducted out of 
pure good-will and in a sincere desire to con- 
tribute to the happiness of others. For her- 
self, the pleasure in it was deadened by the 
graver experiences of life. "My dear," she 
said once to a young relative who was in 
affliction on account of some misadventure, 
"do not trouble about it; there is nothing in 
this world worth really caring for. Yes," she 
said once more, " believe me, I who have lived 
80 long repeat to you, there is nothing in this 
world really worth caring for. " 

Her mind dwelt more and more in the happy 
days of the past, and from the troubles of the 
present she sought refuge in the consolations 
of religion. In this matter her peculiar tem- 
perament showed itself with great distinct- 

274 



OLD AGE AND DEATH 

ness. Her tendency to reflect the opinions of 
those whom she loved and respected was par- 
ticularly marked in this direction. John 
Payne was a sturdy Friend, and his daughter 
hid her pretty face beneath the broad-brimmed 
Quaker bonnet, and murmured " thee " and 
" thou " as meekly as any " Deborah " in the 
City of Brotherly Love. John Todd continued 
in the Quaker traditions, and his wife knew 
no other opinions. James Madison, on the 
contrary, was a disciple of the Jeffersonian 
school of thought, considered in those days 
dangerously latitudinarian. The clergyman 
of the Church of England, who came often 
to visit his pious mother and administer the 
communion which her advanced age forbade 
her taking in church, found in Madison a 
courteous but non-committal listener; and a 
good bishop reluctantly records : " I was never 
at Mr. Madison's but once, and then the 
conversation took such a turn, though not 
designed on my part, as to call forth some 
expressions and arguments which left the im- 
pression on my mind that his creed was not 
strictly regulated by the Bible." 

Yet here, as in every other department of 
life, Madison's course was marked by modera- 
tion, and his wife loyally followed his lead. 
Neither joined any communion, but both were 
275 



DOLLY MADISON 

regular attendants at the quaint old brick 
church in the centre of Orange Court House 
four miles from Montpellier. After Madison's 
death, when his widow came back to Washing- 
ton, she continued her regular attendance at 
the little church of St. John on Lafayette 
Square, and only a stone's throw from her 
house. Mr. Hawley, the rector, and an old 
friend, easily persuaded her of her ardent wish 
to become a communicant ; and here she was 
accordingly baptized and confirmed by Bishop 
Whittingham of Maryland. 

As the year 1849 drew on toward summer, it 
became evident to those around her that Mrs. 
Madison's life was drawing to a close, yet her 
mind remained clear till near the end, and 
even when her intellect failed her loving heart 
showed itself true to the last. Her "poor 
boy " was often in her thoughts, and her arms 
were stretched out affectionately to all who 
entered her sick room. 

In July she began to realize that her days 
were numbered. Her will, dated July ninth, 
1849, begins after the accepted form of the 
day: — 

^an the name of God, Amen! I, Dolly P. 

Madison, widow of James Madison of Virginia, 

being of sound and disposing mind and memory, 

but feeble in body, having in view the uncertainty 

276 



OLD AGE AND DEATH 

of life and the rapid approach, of death, do make, 
publish and declare the following to be my last will 
and testament." 

The signature is a feeble trembling scrawl, 
sadly differing from the round clear hand of 
other days. The witnesses to the will were 
Sally B. L. Thomas, wife of Dr. Thomas, Eliz- 
abeth Lee, and James Madison Cutts. The 
will bequeathed "to my dear son, John Payne 
Todd, the sum of ten thousand dollars, one 
half the sum appropriated by the Congress of 
the United States for the purchase of my hus- 
band's papers." "To my adopted daughter, 
Annie Payne," the other half of this purchase 
money is bequeathed, and the remainder of 
the property, real and personal, is left to be 
distributed as the law directs. 

When Payne Todd afterwards disputed this 
will in the effort to secure the amount of this 
bequest left to Anna Payne, then the wife of 
Dr. Causten, the value of the estate was 
brought out before the court. The amount in 
bank was sworn to as twenty-two thousand 
dollars; the household furniture and plate 
were estimated at nine hundred ; the books at 
five hundred ; the pictures and portraits, four 
of them painted by Gilbert Stuart, five thou- 
sand; and the negro slaves two thousand. The 
ground of the attack on the will is not men- 

277 



DOLLY MADISON 

tioned in the records, but the question finally 
submitted to the jury was whether that will 
was " the true last will and testament of said 
Dolly P. Madison," and the verdict was 
"yes." 

In the settlement of the estate the household 
furnishings were put up at public auction. 
Anna Payne was very anxious to secure the 
Stuart portrait of her aunt, and hearing that 
Mr. Corcoran intended securing it for his 
gallery, she went to him and begged him not 
to bid against her. Deeply touched, Mr. 
Corcoran declared that she should have it, 
and to her accordingly it fell. 

The making of her will was almost the last 
act of Mrs. Madison's life. This was done on 
Monday, while she lay ill. On Tuesday the 
Washington bulletins announced that Mrs. 
Madison was better, and her nearest friends 
rejoiced in the hope of a rally, but it proved 
deceptive. While listening to a chapter from 
the Gospel of St. John she fell into a deep 
sleep, never to recover full consciousness. The 
physicians pronounced the attack apoplexy, 
and after two days she quietly breathed her 
last on Thursday evening, the twelfth of July, 
1849. 

In death as in life she held the interest not 
only of her immediate friends, but of the out- 
278 



OLD AGE AND DEATH 

side world, and it was decided to hold a public 
funeral on Monday the sixteenth, in old St. 
John's Church, whose tiny dome and pictur- 
esque steeple had been for years the most 
familiar objects to Dolly Madison's vision. 
Here within its cool, shadowy aisle, before the 
chancel, the coffin rested; and, in order to 
gratify the desires of the public, it was an- 
nounced that the remains would be visible 
until the commencement of the ceremonies. 
When those were ended, the coffin was borne 
to the Congressional Cemetery, followed by a 
j procession such as has seldom, if ever, done 
1 honor to the memory of any woman in this 
(i country. The order previously arranged was 
i as follows : — 

The Keverend Clergy, 
Attending Physicians, 
Pall bearers. 
Hon. J. M. Clayton, Hon. W. M. Meredith, Mr. 
Gales, Mr. Ritchie, Gen. Jessup, Gen. Totten, 
Com. Morris, Com. Warrington, Gen. Hen- 
derson, Mr. Pleasanton, Gen. Walter 
Jones, Mr. Fendall. 
The Family. 
The President and Cabinet. 
The Diplomatic Corps. 
279 



DOLLY MADISON 

Members of the Senate and House of Representatives 

at present in Washington, and their officers. 

Judges of the Supreme Court and Courts of the 

District and their officers. 

Officers of the Army and Navy. 

Mayor and Corporation of Washington. 

Citizens and Strangers. 

Thus with much pomp and circumstance, 
with deep grief and true love, Dolly Madison's 
body was laid to rest in the Washington 
cemetery, but not to remain there forever. 
Some years later it was removed by Mr. 
Richard Cutts to the most fitting resting-place 
by the side of her husband, under the shadow 
of the beloved walls of Montpellier. 

On a beautiful day of Indian summer I 
opened the gate of the Madison burying-ground, 
and passed between the low walls of crumbling 
moss-grown brick which hedge it in from the 
waste of meadow stretching away to the foot 
hills of that Blue Ridge which towers like 
some great guardian spirit above all the region. 
In one corner of the enclosure, side by side, I 
found two monuments, — one a simple granite 
shaft erected to the famous son of Virginia by 
his brethren of the Old Dominion, and marked 
simply " Madison ; " the other a smaller obelisk 
of white marble standing out somewhat crudely 

280 



OLD AGE AND DEATH 

against the mellow tones of the mottled brick. 
On this was carved : — 



IN 



^ E M O R^ 

OF 

DOLLEY PAYNE 

WIFE OF 

James Madison 

BORN 
MAY 20TH, 1768 

DIED 
JULY 8TH, 1849 

As I noted the superfluous " e " in the name, 
and the wrong date set down as the day of her 
death, I wondered if these misstatements per- 
petuated in marble had power to disturb the 
tranquillity of her who slept below. But as I 
stooped and parted the periwinkle which runs 
riot above her grave, I seemed to hear once 
more Dolly Madison's soft southern voice say- 
ing soothingly, "Nothing in this world is of 
much moment, my dear. " 



281 



INDEX 



Adams, Abigail, description 
of Washington and of the 
White House in 1800, 80 ; 
on Mrs. Madison's influence, 
132. 

Adams, John, on living in 
Philadelphia, 48 ; impres- 
sions of Mrs. Madison, 72 ; 
inauguration of, 74. 

Ames, Fisher, on lodgings in 
Philadelphia, 48 ; anecdote 
of, 261. 

Assemblies, the, 68 ; rules 
for, 69 ; toilets for, 70. 

Bacon, Captain, stewardship 
of, at Monticello, 223. 

Balmaine, Rev. Dr., 59. 

Barbour, James, 222. 

Barbour, Philip, 222. 

Barlow, Joel, letters of, 147. 

Bill of Rights, Virginia, pur- 
pose of, 15. 

Blaine, James G., on Mrs. 
Madison as a political force, 
142. 

Burr, Aaron, acquaintance of, 
with Mrs. Todd, 49 ; intro- 
duces Madison to her, 50 ; 
appearance and character of, 
55 ; duel of, with Hamilton, 



100 et seq. ; conspiracy of, 
102 ; trial of, 117. 



Clay, Henry, anecdote of, 
191. 

Coles, Mary, marriage of, 5; 
Jefferson's admiration for, 
76. 

Creighton, Hugh, 25. 

Cutts, James Madison, mar- 
riage of, 235. 

Cutts, Richard D., marriage 
of, 99. 

Cutts, Richard D., Jr., mar- 
riage of, 274. 



Dandridge, Dorothea Spots- 
wood, 3 ; marriage of, to 
Patrick Henry, 3 ; marriage 
of, to Judge E. Winston, 
3. 

Dandridge, Nathaniel W., 3. 

Dawson, Joshua, letter of, 
198. 

De Warville, Brlssot, on Mad- 
ison, 50. 

Dickens, Charles, description 
of Washington in 1842, 
257. 



283 



I 



INDEX 



Drinker, Elizabeth, journal 
of, 23 ; ancestry of, 23 ; 
opinion of Gray's Ferry, 
41. 

Ebskine, David Montague, 
succeeds Merry as British 
Minister, 90. 

Fleming, Anna, marriage of, 
4 ; ancestry of, 4. 

Floyd, Catherine, engagement 
of, to Madison, 52. 

Floyd, General William, 52. 

Freneau, Philip, congratula- 
tions of, 63. 

Gates, General Horatio, con- 
gratulations of, 63. 

Giles, Governor, invitation of, 
241. 

Gray's Ferry, pleasure resort 
for Philadelphians, 41. 

Hamilton, Alexander, duel of, 
with Burr, 100 et seq. 

Henry, Patrick, marriage of, 
3 ; intense loyalty of, 13. 

Irving, W., description of 
Washington Society, 139; his 
opinion of Mrs. Gallatin, 161. 

Jackson, Andrew, enter- 
tained by Mrs. Madison. 
190. 

Jefferson, Thomas, sympa- 
thy of, 53 ; arguments of, 
to dissuade Madison from 
retiring from public life, 71 ; 
affection of, for Mrs. Mad- 
ison, 76 ; inauguration of, 83 ; 
experiences of, with Merry, 



87 ; state dinners of, 93 ; in- 
ventive fancy of, 106 ; sec- 
ond term of, 108 ; anecdote 
of, 129 ; as a guest at Mont- 
pellier, 223 ; as a host at 
Monticello, 223 ; death of, 
237 ; sale of effects of, 238. 

Jennings, Paul, on burning 
of Washington, 176. 

Johnson, William, Jr., letter 
of, 197. 

Madison, Bishop J., congratu- 
lations of, 62. 

Madison, Mrs. E. C, descrip- 
tion of, 206 ; death of, 240. 

Madison, Dorothea Payne 
Todd, birth of, 3 ; ancestry 
of, 4 ; the training of, in girl- 
hood, 9; arrival of, in Phil- 
adelphia, 18 ; Quaker gaye- 
ties of, 23 ; visits of, to neigh- 
boring villages, 24 ; marriage 
of, to John Todd, 30 ; views 
of, on matrimony, 31 ; the 
Quaker marriage ceremony, 
32 ; miniature portrait of, 
34 ; early married life of, 36 ; 
birth of first son of, 38 ; birth 
of second son of, 39 ; flight 
of, from Philadelphia to es- 
cape yellow fever, 40 ; death 
of husband and second son 
of, 44; return of, to Philadel- 
phia, 47 ; acquaintance of, 
with Burr, 49 ; meets Madi- 
son, 59 ; engagement of, to 
Madison, 56 ; marriage of, 
59 ; journey of, to Montpel- 
lier, 61 ; social life of, in 
Philadelphia, 66 ; influence 
of, over her husband, 71; 
secret of the charm of, 73 ; 
life of, in Montpellier during 



284 



INDEX 



Adams's administration, 75; 
goes to Washington at Jeffer- 
son's invitation, 80; wife of 
the Secretary of State, 84 ; 
portraits of, 98 ; letters of, to 
her sister, 100 ; one element 
of the success of, 101 ; inti- 
macy of, with Theodosia 
Burr, 103 ; illness of, 109; 
wife of the President, 120; 
the "White House in the time 
of, 133 ; instance of the tact of, 
144; friendship of, for the 
Barlows, 147 ; demeanor of, 
during war of 1812, 155 et 
$eq. ; as a hostess, 163 ; min- 
iature portrait of, painted in 
1813, 167 ; journal of, on 
burning of Washington, 172; 
flight of, from the city, 176; 
occupies the Tayloe house, 
185 ; entertains Andrew Jack- 
son, 190 ; departure of, from 
Washington, 199 ; life of, at 
Montpellier, 204 et seq. ; 
devotion of, to Madison's 
mother, 208; disappointment 
of, in her son, 213; daily du- 
ties of, 214 ; gifts presented 
to, 217; visitors at Mont- 
pellier, 220 ; visit of Harriet 
Martineau to, 228 ; letter of, 
243; death of husband of, 
247; response of, to resolu- 
tions of Congress, 250 ; re- 
turn of, to Washington, 254; 
distress of, caused by her 
son, 259; receives aid from 
Congress, 260; description 
of, in her old age, 261 ; nar- 
row escape of, 264 ; auto- 
graph of, 271; death of, 278 ; 
will of, 277; funeral of, 
279. 



Madison, James, enters public 
life, 12; meets Mrs. Todd, 
50 ; public services of, 51 ; 
first love affair of, 52; its 
sequel, 53; appearance and 
character of, 55 ; marriage of, 
59; journey of, to Montpel- 
lier, 61 ; tired of public life, 
71; in the Virginia Assem- 
bly, 78; made Secretary of 
State by Jefferson, 84; po- 
litical opponents of, 118; 
elected President, 120; in- 
auguration of, 125; part 
played by, in the war of 1812, 
153 et seq. ; re-elected Presi- 
dent, 166; weak defence of 
the capital, 169 et seq. ; 
flight from the city, 177 ; re- 
covers popularity with peace, 
188 ; at the end of his second 
term, 193; retires to Mont- 
pellier, 201; kindness of, to 
his wife's relatives, 209; let- 
ters of, 215 et seq. ; his love 
of horses, 245 ; death of, 247 ; 
resolutions of Congress in 
honor of, 249 ; report of pro- 
ceedings of Constitutional 
Convention, 251 ; will of, 
251. 

Martineau, Harriet, visit of, 
to Montpellier, 228 et seq. ; 
estimate of Mrs. Madison, 
234. 

Mason, George, on the war, 
13. 

McKean, Sally, marriage of, 
68 

Merry, Anthony, relations of, 
with Jefferson and Madison, 
78 et seq. ; succeeded as Brit- 
ish Minister by Erskine, 
90. 



285 



INDEX 



Monroe, James, description of, 
136; death of, 239. 

Montpellier, situation of, 61; 
description of, 202 tt seq. ; 
visitors to, 220. 

Morris, Gouverneur, descrip- 
tion of Washington by, 79. 

Payne, Anna, portrait of, 98; 
marriage of, 99. 

Payne, John, grandfather of 
Dolly Madison, 4; arrival of, 
in Virginia, 4 ; marriage of, 4. 

Payne, John, Jr., marriage 
of, to Mary Coles, 5 ; return 
of, to Virginia, 5; life of, 
in Colonial days, 6 ; enters 
the Continental Army, 12; 
Quaker principles of, 14; 
frees his slaves, 16 ; arrival of, 
in Philadelphia, 18; becomes 
a lay preacher, 25; opposi- 
tion of, to slavery, 27 ; death 
of 35 ; will of, admitted to 
probate, 73. 

Payne, Lucy, marriage of, 35 ; 
makes her home with Mrs. 
Madison, 139. 

Pavne, Mary, made executrix, 
73; death of, 120. 

Philadelphia, appearance of, 
in ]783, 18; the people of, 
19; customs of the Friends 
in, 21 ; three classes of soci- 
ety in, 22; living expenses 
in, 29; devastated by yellow 
fever in 1793, 39 'ei seq. ; 
society of, from 1794 to 1797, 
67; foreign visitors to, 68. 

Physick, Dr. Philip Syng, 109. 

Polk, James K., on hand-shak- 
ing, 255; inauguration of, 
265 ; unpublished diary of, 
265. 



Preston, William C, anecdote 
of, 144. 

Randolph, John, early educa- 
tion of, 11. 

Randolph, Martha Jefferson, 
89 ; letter of, to Jefferson, 96. 

Skaton, Mrs. William, de- 
scription of a White Hoase 
dinner, 163. 

Smith, Mrs. Margaret, descrip- 
tion by, of Mrs. E. C. Madi- 
son, 208. 

Todd, John, a teacher, 36; 

death of, 43 ; will of, 43. 
Todd, John, Jr., marriage 

of, to Dolly Payne, 30; 

famih' of, 30 ; practice of, as 

a lawyer, 36; death of, 44; 

will of, 46. 
Todd, John Payne, birth of, 

38; at school, 149; dissipated 

habits of, 211; visit of, to 

Europe, 212; debts of, 259; 

death of, 269. 
Todd, William Temple, birth 

of, 39 ; death of, 44. 

Van Ness, Mrs. John P., a 
social leader, 137. 

Washington, City of, named, 
78 ; described by Gouverneur 
Morris, 79; by AbigJiil 
Adams, 80; society of, 115; 
condition of, in 1809, 135; 
societ}' of, described by W. 
Irving, 139; capture and 
burning of, 178; described 
by Dickens, 257. 

Washington, George, at Gray's 
Ferry, 42; on matrimony, 



286 



INDEX 



57; farewell of, 74; death 

of, 77. 

Washington, George Steptoe, 
marriage of, 35. 

Washington, Martha, on Dolly 
Todd's engagement to Madi- 
son, 56. 

Wetherell, Samuel, sermons of, 
26. 

Wigton, Earl of, 4. 



Winder, General, defence by, 

of Washington, 169. 
Winston, Judge Edmund, 

marriage of, 3. 

Yellow Fever, Plague of, in 
Philadelphia in 1793, 39 *t 
sea. 



"^^1 



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